New Hampshire Maple Weekend

This is Maple Weekend in New Hampshire. Sugar shacks around the state are open for visitors...welcoming people to tour their little wooden structures in the woods and sample their syrup.

We started the day off with pancakes and maple syrup. Quick tip: buttermilk always makes pancakes better, lighter, and fluffier. Just substitute buttermilk for the milk called for in any recipe. 

Then, dodging raindrops and big, sloppy snowflakes, we visited a sugar shack in our town that is run by a family whose roots go back in this town to the 1700's. We traipsed across a mixture of snow and mud to reach the weathered door of the sugar shack.

Just inside, we could barely feel the heat from the wood-fired evaporator, so inched our way ever closer to keep warm.

We were offered homemade donuts to dunk in a sampling of maple syrup. Mmm. A taste of early spring in New England! We peered into the bubbling evaporator and smelled the sticky goodness of the sweet steam rising up and out of the roof.

After chatting with plaid-clad neighbors about weather and sap production and whether or not this is a good year for syrup (it is!), we purchased a pint to carry home.

It's a New England spring tradition I love...a bonding of a community after a long winter. Spring is here!