Maple Weekend

This month we were able to experience our very first Maine Maple Weekend!  It was so neat, and I now understand why maple syrup is so incredibly expensive. If you look closely you can see all the buckets on the trees.

The first place we went to was Hilltop Boilers.  They do things the old fashioned way...by drilling holes in their trees and letting it drip into buckets.  Then they collect the buckets, distill it, and finally get maple syrup.  I guess it takes tons of collected sap to equal just a pint of syrup... and you can only collect sap in March, when the sap is frozen at night and thaws enough to drain during the day.  If you wait until it gets too warm, then the sap tastes woody.  Also, maple sap spoils like milk, so it has to be consistently gathered to prevent that from happening.   And you get different grades of syrup depending on the health of the tree.  I will never complain about the cost of pure maple syrup again!

This is the shed that housed the huge boiler.  The kids were very impressed.

Mia loved the barn... there was a baby calf that was born 2 days before we went.  She was so excited!  The mother cow was not. :)

I was so, so proud of my brave boy.  There was a contest where kids could run an obstacle course with a bucket of "maple sap" (water).  Logan usually freaks out whenever he thinks anyone is watching him, but this kid really wanted the candy bar at the end!  He ran as fast as he could, even with lots of people looking on.  He's growing up!  Maybe that means he will play a sport this year. :)

We drove to the western border of Maine to get to this particular maple farm.  There were buckets tied to trees all over the forests!

There were tons and tons of free samples... maple pancakes, maple whoopie pies, maple ice cream, maple cotton candy.... We instantly fell in love with maple whoopie pies and promptly consumed far too many. :)

We also had to pick up some yummy syrup..... 

The second farm we visited did things a little differently... they had tubes running through each tree, all over the farm, that all led straight to the boiler.  Much more efficient, but not nearly as fun to look at. 

Maine has old churches like this around every other corner.  They are so pretty!  And next to every church is a super old graveyard, with gravestones so old the writing is worn off.  The ones we can read date to the early 1800's. 

Maple cotton candy!

And a Mia. :)