Okay. It may not make your list of things to do before you die, but if you have never tasted real maple syrup you have got to give it a try.
I was thinking that there are people we all know that have "everything" and are difficult to buy for, for Christmas. Pure maple syrup might be the answer.
When I was a little feller, my dad took me to a sugar maple farm or bush, as it is called, up near Castalia Iowa, to spend a week working with the proprietor and his son Dale. I was around thirteen at the time, and remember that this was the hardest I had ever worked in my life. The pails that hang from the spiggots are the four gallon size and typically you carry two to the horse drawn vat. The vat is eventually emptied into a holding area where below is a huge oven repeatedly stocked with timber to keep the fire hot and constant. The sap goes through many gates as it is cooked going from clear to light gold to a beautiful amber. And the consistency changes as the color changes.
So, after stomping around in the boot sucking mud for a week, and emptying untold hundreds of pails of sap to be cooked down, I finally had the opportunity to try some syrup that I had actually helped make. It is wonderful. Even the raw sap takes good. Something akin to sugar water, but sweeter.
Anyway, if anyone is interested in calling them to order any product, please PM me and I will get you a phone number.
I was thinking that there are people we all know that have "everything" and are difficult to buy for, for Christmas. Pure maple syrup might be the answer.
When I was a little feller, my dad took me to a sugar maple farm or bush, as it is called, up near Castalia Iowa, to spend a week working with the proprietor and his son Dale. I was around thirteen at the time, and remember that this was the hardest I had ever worked in my life. The pails that hang from the spiggots are the four gallon size and typically you carry two to the horse drawn vat. The vat is eventually emptied into a holding area where below is a huge oven repeatedly stocked with timber to keep the fire hot and constant. The sap goes through many gates as it is cooked going from clear to light gold to a beautiful amber. And the consistency changes as the color changes.
So, after stomping around in the boot sucking mud for a week, and emptying untold hundreds of pails of sap to be cooked down, I finally had the opportunity to try some syrup that I had actually helped make. It is wonderful. Even the raw sap takes good. Something akin to sugar water, but sweeter.
Anyway, if anyone is interested in calling them to order any product, please PM me and I will get you a phone number.