Sugaring-off Party (aka syrup party)

My friend Jared Burke lives in New Hampshire on Lake Winnipesaukee. His family are the care takers of the compound owned by the Marriott family. They have maple trees and invited some people for a sugaring-off party. the drive was beautiful and the day was nice. They still had quite a bit of snow but it was a lovely day.

This is a small Creek that flows through the property.

Daniel McMurtry and I went for a walk around the compound. He had been there before so he gave me a walking tour. We came upon the bird house and I thought it was cool looking and how lucky are the birds to have such a nice place.

This is the biggest house and it was gorgeous. It is so big that I couldn't get it all in one picture. An aerial view might have done the trick. This is one of about 5-6 houses on the compound.

Here is another view. I loved the red on rock look. This is the only house that looks like this the rest were a blueish grey color you will see in a picture down a bit.

A tree house this looks like a fun place.

When I saw the tree house I thought if we would have made an actual tree house growing up it would have been something like this. My dad would have designed something out of the ordinary.

There is a view of the lake. It still had a layer of ice on it. Close to the shore lines the ice had melted but out further still frozen over.

I got to tap a tree. I took this hand drill and drilled a hole in the tree to have the sap start to flow out so we could collect more.

My hole drilling skills. The hole I drilled is the one in the center. You can see three holes at a diagonal line and mine is the middle one. The I got the hammer in the spigot and hook and hang the bucket to start the collection process.

This is a very big maple tree and it had a ton of holes all over in it.

There is my bucket mounted I mounted the bucket on a different tree than the one I drilled the hole into.

You can see buckets on lots of trees.

The sap collected from the trees. It takes 32 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup.

Did you hear me say liquid GOLD? No wonder the real stuff is so expensive. But oh so goooooood!!!

The blue barrel holds the sap and it goes down the tube and into the boiler

Here is where they boil the sap for many hours to get it to be just right. There are 4 different grades of syrup and you get the different grades depending on how long you cook the syrup for.

It was a fun experience to be able to see the process and to participate it in. Even if it was just a little.

Jared's dad made pancakes and we all ate pancakes and homemade maple syrup.

One thing they do with the Maple syrup to make another treat is they will take drops of syrup and put it on snow and it will turn the syrup into a candy like treat. It was very tasty.