Maple time!

Mae, Delsin and I spent last weekend at Buck Lake with our neighbours and friends Paul & Carolyn to experience making maple syrup first hand! P&C have built their own sugar shack complete with evaporator and tap trees on land they own around their cottage/home and have, very cleverly, named their product "Tree Pee"! Despite very chilly temps, the kids and I had a ball collecting syrup from tapped trees and then watching the boiling process the next day. Mae even learned how to drill and tap trees with Paul showing her the ropes. The sap we had collected was frozen solid but Paul managed to make us up a batch using some syrup he had left over from the filtering process the day before and some sap that was thawed out and we boiled it up on a pot on a propane burner. I was thrilled that we managed to take home some yummy nectar despite Mother Nature not cooperating with us...haha! A huge thanks to P&C for taking the time out to show us the process and for giving the kids such a cool experience.

And yes, it is delicious!!

Here are a few pics of our weekend and if you click on the title of this post "Maple time!" it will take you to my .Mac photo album and you can view the rest of the pics.

Enjoy!
Laura :o)

Collecting sap with Paul & Carolyn
Boiling to make it into syrup!
Filtering the boiling syrup
A bottle for Mae!
And one for Del!
2008...a very good year for Tree Pee!
The kids with their booty!
Before and after!