Maple Sugaring & a Visit from Grandma

Last weekend, we were lucky to have Grandma visit us from NC for a few days. She flew in by herself just to see us. She got to go to school with us Thursday and Leah's dance class. Friday night we had an early Easter dinner with our "adopted" exchange student, Maria. Then Saturday morning we found out it was Open House Weekend for Sugarhouses in Vermont (where they collect & bottle maple syrup). I had been wanting the kids to learn the process of sugaring, so we went to one nearby and got to see it in action.

It was a very cold day and still snow on the ground!

They had a self-guided tour of the process. We really didn't get to see the actual trees they tap, which are apparently down the road a little, but they showed us an example of one and the lines they use to collect the sap.

They also had a "sugarbush" maze, where we had to find our way through a bunch of plastic tubing, which is what they use to get the sap from the tree to the collection pots. We're not sure if we actually did it right, but we found our way out without going under any of the tubes.

Though you may see a lot of these metal buckets on maple trees in Vermont, that is actually the old-fashioned way of tapping the tree and it's not really used in the larger production companies anymore-- now they use the tubing.

Once we got inside the sugarhouse, we saw where the sap comes in the building, then they put it through a reverse osmosis machine that removes about 75% of the water to make it about 9% sugar. Then it goes through the sap pan and then the syrup pan, which is heated by a wood fire inside it, to eventually boil it down to about 66.9% sugar. That is what makes it official Vermont Maple Syrup (no wonder it tastes so good!). We learned it takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup (and that's why it's so expensive!). Then they filter out the cloudy impurities and put it directly into jugs or larger storage drums.

This man was the owner of the sugarhouse and he was really nice to explain a lot of things to the kids while he was boiling.

Then they got to taste some. You would not think it would be good to drink pure maple syrup, but it was actually very delicious. We also bought some maple doughnuts to take home for later. We learned a lot and felt like official Vermonters once we had finished!

And for further proof Grandma was here, and that Abigail finally let her hold her (on the last day).

And here is the kids with our exchange student, Maria. She is really great at entertaining them and adores hanging out with them when she comes over. We enjoyed learning a few words in her Filipino dialect and we also enjoyed learning how she, as a Catholic, celebrated Easter growing up.