Sunday, March 10, 2013
Maple Syrup Festival
We drove up to Hueston Woods State Park for the annual maple syrup festival.
The first stop was the lodge/conference center for the pancake breakfast.
The temperatures were approaching the sixties.
At least fifty people were in line ahead of us....
So.
On to the sugar bush.
We parked by the beach and took the West Shore Trail along Acton Lake.
It was muddy... we wore our boots.
This is how the Indians boiled down the sap to make maple syrup.
The hollowed out ash or basswood log.
Today, the maple sap is collected in a cistern.
Clear plastic tubing carries the sap from the trees.
A well managed pipe line system yields more sap than the
bucket method and requires less time and labor.
The sugarhouse.
The water is boiled off the sap in long, shallow pans
called evaporators. The color and flavor are developed during this process.
Pure maple syrup is strained through the white cloth bag before
being collected in the bucket.
Some producers let part of the sap boil beyond the syrup stage until
it becomes maple sugar.
We were early, so we were able to actually see the evaporators in the
sugarhouse.
The young man at the head of the evaporator told us that close to a
thousand visitors had toured the sugarhouse Saturday.
We could hear the 'plink,' 'plink' of the sap dripping into the buckets.
The branch in the left picture was removed after it splintered.
The face as well as the side of the tree is covered with sap.
The back side of the Lodge from across Acton Lake.
We walked the trail along Acton Lake back to the beach.
There were muddy sections....
We waded a shallow creek to wash off the mud.
The temperatures were in the low 60's.
One of the warmer days for the maple syrup festival.
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# posted by Martha @ 9:22 PM 
