That SWEET taste of spring

It's Friday evening and another week has passed.. where do the days disappear to? I honestly don't know- they just seem to evaporate... Things are still a bit "upset" here. My father-in-law had his surgery, spent another week in hospital and now is in a facility for a week of respite care to convalesce before going home. We hope he will gain some strength back.. getting old is not for sissies, that's for sure!
Our family room re-do is still a work in progress. Our carpet installation is scheduled for next Tuesday - it will be so nice to have that done. Still waiting for the roller shade for the window.
I have made good progress on my Guild Challenge piece; the top is all together (it's a small piece). I'll show you a photo tomorrow. I had thought I would keep it under wraps, but what the heck? Why not? The easy part is done, what I'm adding to it next will be the challenge...

We DO love our maple trees!

I have not done much photography lately.. (I'm probably getting rusty...) I have signed up for a Digital Photography course to learn about all the "features" on my camera which I know nothing about.. I was not happy when I found out I was the first to register for the class. I am really HOPING enough people sign up for it to run.. I tried to take this class last summer, but there were not enough students. SO if you live in my area, and are interested in learning more about your DSLR, get in touch and I'll give you the info. It's only for 4 weeks, 2 hours per evening, once a week, at UNB.
I will share a few photos with you that I took 2 weekends ago when DD was home. We visited Dumfries Maples, a local maple syrup producer.  I was disappointed that their evaporator was not running as that was what I really wanted to photograph... but I guess they were so busy with their pancake breakfasts and making maple taffy on the snow, they didn't have the time (or staff?) to run the evaporator as well...
So my pics aren't too exciting, unless you have never been to a Sugar Bush. It was a sunny day (which we've had too few of lately) and it felt great to get out in the fresh air and see that sap a drippin'... Dumfries Maples collects sap by both the "old fashioned" method of cans hung under spiles on the trees and the more modern method of trees being "online" with plastic pipeline.

I chuckle when I hear folks complain about the price of maple syrup - they obviously have NO idea of how much work syrup-making is. It is labor intensive and time consuming, not to mention the fact that it takes 40 gallons of sap to make ONE gallon of syrup. Once the sap is collected, it must pass through the evaporator which boils it down: water evaporates off, leaving that concentrated sweet golden syrup. Yummmy... But there is  a fine art to GOOD syrup... My Dad was a syrup producer, so I am familiar with the process... At Dumfries Maples, the collected sap is brought to the sugarhouse where a Reverse Osmosis machine is used to remove over half the water and raise the sap sugar content to over 7%. This concentrated sap is then gravity fed into the wood-fired evaporator, where it is boiled to produce the syrup. With their system at full capacity, their evaporator will process over 800 liters of sap per hour, yielding 20 liters of syrup per hour. Here is a Youtube video (NOT from Dumfries Maples) which explains the process of evaporation - from sap to syrup!




If you have never visited a Sugar Shack, you don't know what you're missing... It's a "Spring Thing"!!

Peace,
Linda

Ahhh, the sweet taste of spring...