Maple Syrup

This morning we went to check out how maple syrup is made. This maple farm was less than 30 minutes from our house.

It's pretty "high tech" these days, they've come a long way from buckets hanging on the tree.

The sap runs through all of the blue tubes into bigger tubes towards the bottom and then into the sugar house.

The sugar house is where they boil the sap a lot. It takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup.

Lots of steam. They were actually boiling water today for the "tourists" because the warm weather cut their season short. They got about 1/2 of the sap this year that they would during a "normal" winter.

There was a hay-ride.

There was a kids play area.

There were a couple of camps with these guys who were doing metal work ...

... and other guys with old guns to look at.

And then this camp with the "mountain men." How cool is this guy?!? He was also as nice as could be!

He was making Indian arrow heads. K and Matt were very interested and M asked if he could buy one and he said "absolutely not, you can have one." So K got to pick one out and we are going to frame it to put in his room.

They were cooking their lunch. K thought it was a turtle.

This guy was firing muskets.

K was fascinated by these guys. I didn't know it at the time but he kept telling Matt that they were "pretty cool pirates."

We bought 1/2 a gallon of real maple syrup (C is demonstrating how heavy it is), some maple sugar, and some maple cotton candy (YUM!!). I may never be able to buy Aunt Jamima again.

To try our maple syrup I made these German Pancakes for dinner. YUM!! (The picture is not mine, we didn't have any fruit, but I will be more prepared next time.)