The kids are just chompin’ at the bit to get outside! Normally I would just bundle them up and throw them off the back deck, but with the yard not really fenced in all the way and the mountain of snow in the front yard…I’m not trusting them to stay in the back yard where it’s safe. Which means mommy has to go outside too, all the time, and frankly all the ice makes me nervous. I do not want to fall.
One of the sweet perks of the warmer weather means that the sap is starting to flow! We have several maple trees on our little strip of land, but have never had the time to invest in tapping them. This year a neighbor asked if he could…By all means! Go for it! Of course, we did demand some small reparations for the use of our trees.
This is an entirely new experience for me. I hated maple syrup growing up; the smell reminded me of sticky, dirty kids. No idea why. It’s another food that I’ve acquired a taste for only in the past few years, and now I love it {particularly rich, thick, grade B}. Of course the first thing I did once the buckets were up was check them out. On the first sunny afternoon I ran out to see if the sap was flowing. It was, although it was more of a slow drip.
Now, I’ve accidentally licked pitch or sap off my hand before while out in the woods, thinking it would taste sweet and it tasted horrible. I tentatively reached under that little tin roof and caught a drip on my finger: Lightly sweetened sugar water. That’s what it tastes like. Nothing like maple syrup and nothing like what I thought.
The buckets have been out a few weeks, getting dumped and boiled as they start to fill. Then one sunny, if cold, morning, someone was traipsing around the front yard and banged on the front door. A glass bottle brimming with golden liquid in hand. Our rewards for having maple trees on our property: Maple Syrup. The kids and I each anxiously dipped our fingers in the narrow bottleneck, excited to taste OUR maple syrup. It did not disappoint.
**If you want to check out a fun book about a sugar snow, this one is Avie and
my favorite {My First Little House Book “Sugar Snow”}!
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