Maple Festival 2019

 Willie put on my boots and was ready to join us for our trip to the sugar camps.  Sorry little fella, this is not a trip for puppies and I am going to need my boots.  I brought some maple puppy treats home. He and Winnie were very happy that I remembered to get something for them.

 Our first, and favorite sugar shack. Click on any pic to enlarge.

 There was still quite a bit of snow in the mountains which made us very happy.

 Enter the sugar shack.

 A table, laden with all things maple, is there for you to sample.  I'm not naming names, but I know a few people that ate a bit of everything. One had the initials... TBT.  All of the samples come with recipes in case you want to make them with the syrup you buy.

 Here is the beast.

 Made in Quebec.

 This is Joel.  He will take you step by step through the whole process if you wish.  We have gone to so many sugar shacks over the years, I think we could be making maple syrup. Well, if I had acres of maple trees and a giant machine from Canada.

 That spout at the end is where the boiled down syrup finally comes out.....the finished product! The smell in these shacks is life changing.  Maple heaven.

 And the highlight of The Blog Tech's day, a maple syrup sundae.

 And then we were off to the next shack.  A beautiful drive through snow covered farmland.

 Past barns.

 And Farmhouses.

 To the next shack.  This is the holding tank for the maple water.  You can see blue piping running from the holding area.  These lines run for miles through the woods and the taps from the trees drain the maple water into them and a vacuum system pulls the water to the holding tanks and eventually to the boiler.  It is a much more efficient system than using buckets.  This has been like the invention of the wheel for maple syrup makers.

 This is the area where you find the good stuff.  Tables full of free samples of everything you can imaging being made with maple syrup.  We tried cupcakes, cakes, cookies, taffy, maple cotton candy, maple beer, maple wine, maple candied corn chips, maple granola, maple baked bean, all sorts of meats cooked in maple syrup.  You get the idea....if it's edible, they've made it with maple syrup.  Maple popcorn is fire!

This was only the second shack and my kids were doing 'maple groaning' already.  I suggested that they might want to pace themselves.

 Maple carrots, kielbasa and meatballs.  All were very good.

 A selection of syrups, maple cream, maple covered nuts and other things for sale. Syrup comes in 4 grades Grade A Golden...delicate taste.  Grade A Amber...rich taste.  Grade A Dark...robust taste.  Grade A Very Dark...strong taste.  Guess which one we always buy?  The darkest.  We are maple syrup devils.

 This camp does not have the fancy machines the other camps do but rather this contraption, built generations ago, fed by wood and still producing some award winning syrup.  You notice though that they have given in to using the vacuum lines. Smart people!

You can see the steam coming off the boiling maple water....syrup is on the way.

There is still a lot more to see but this post is far too long already.  I'll post more tomorrow.