Every spring my family goes to the farm and taps at least a hundred sugar maple trees. We bring home barrels of sap sometimes daily. Dad sets up the “sugar shack” and we begin the boil. Gallon after gallon of sap gets put into the pan that dad made and gets boiled down into maple syrup.
Its a fun time of year everyone bundles up in the evening to sit outside around the fire. We sip on hot tea made with the boiling sap, eat smores and tell stories. There is always a few people that stop in “I saw ya had the fire going, figured I’d better stop in and see how things were goin’.” A lot of the family lives rather close by and tend to stop in quite often.
I love this time of year it’s so relaxing and yet exciting. Dad usually has a stick that he carves notches into for every barrel we bring home.The cool fall air reminds me so much of the syrup-ing in the spring. It makes me miss home. I have yet to figure out why maple is thought of as a fall flavor and marketed with fall leaves, when the whole prosess is done in the spring?
