Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Over The River and Through The Woods...

Off to the sugar houses we went! For those of you non-New Englanders, its flood season maple sugaring season up here and the smell coming from those sugar houses is to die for! We grabbed some friends and headed off to visit a few as part of this past weekend's NH Maple Producers Open House ...

Grant Family Pond View Maples in Weare was our first stop.

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They really knew how to welcome folks, serving up delicious maple hot dogs, maple chili and, of course, maple popcorn - and all free! They had maple cotton candy as well, but by the time we got thru the line they were out... bah!

Their magic machine and some grading samples...

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Another magic machine, drawing sap in from the lines and a stack of syrup grading kits...

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Our next stop was Windswept Maples Farm in Loudon, where we encountered some furry friends, big and small...

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Mama and her brand new twins...


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More cuteness...

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This hound greeted us at another sugar house in Loudon where his humans treated us to some vanilla ice cream drizzled with, what else... maple syrup!

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Our last stop was Folsom's Sugar House in Chester where we sampled maple BBQ sauce and maple cream.

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Some of the scenery at Folsom's...

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Sap bucket turned "planter" and the boys who managed to not hurt each other hung in there all day...

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What a fun day spent with great friends... and lots of delicious maple syrup! Of course we couldn't leave empty handed, could we? We brought home some maple cream in mini ice cream cones, maple candy, maple roasted pecans, maple sugar, maple pepper and maple BBQ sauce.

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A couple last shots from the day...

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4 comments:

Sue said...

One year when I was a kid, we tapped our maple trees and collected the sap. It was my cousins and my job to empty the sap buckets each day. We got a lot of sap, but when you boil it down, you sure don't wind up with much. It's really hard work.

Kathy R said...

Looks like you had a great day. Such beautiful pictures! I remember reading about maple syrup in books as a kid but in real life I've never seen anything like that. The bucket on the tree is just like I imagined it would be. What fun to experience this!

SissySees said...

A lemon and white hound AND maple houses?! Sigh. I'm jealous. And the other critters were cute too. Of course, I'm partial to the NY maple syrup, but... ;)

Dianne said...

Oh, I need a sheepie! And some maple candy!

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