The Sugar House

Since we were at Parker’s Maple Barn, and because it’s the New England thing to do to visit a sugar house in the sugaring month of March, we did the tour of their sugar house!  A perfect early-spring day for doing so too!…cloudy skies, cool and crisp air, and the delicious aroma of wood smoke wafting through the air.  Wood smoke is my favorite scent!

Spotted in the parking lot.

Colette and friends!

The bewhiskered man that gives the tour is, in my opinion, a New England classic!  Dry wit.  Warm sweater.  Knowledge and skill.  He’s got it all!  And all the while he’s telling us about how it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup, the air is filled with the sweet steam of evaporating sap mingled with the wood smoke aroma.  Ahhh…positively delicious!

The wood-fired evaporators need a lot of fuel to keep them going…boiling, and boiling, and boiling the maple sap to syrup.

A delightful spring tradition!  The first crop of the season has arrived!