Saturday, March 27, 2010

New Hampshire Maple Sugar Weekend!

This weekend was the time when over 50 sugar shacks across the state of New Hampshire opened their doors to the public. The shacks had free samples of maple syrup, candy, sugar, and other products. You name it, they put maple syrup on it: ice cream, Ritz crackers, hot dogs, cotton candy....you can imagine that the kids were in heaven!
You also get to tour the facilities to see how maple syrup is really made. We learned that it takes 40 gallons of sap to make only 1 gallon of syrup. It was incredible to see that they really do tap the trees and hang buckets to catch the sap, but most of the big farms have a system of tubes running all through the trees that are connected like the picture below.
We stopped at three different maple farms Maple Hill, Rossview, and Windswept maples. Most of the events and goodies were free, which is great for our law school budget!
Here are the kids enjoying their maple sugar cotton candy.


This is inside the sugar shack where they boil down the sap to make the syrup.
New Hampshire keeps surprising me with the most incredible things to do, I absolutely love it here.

6 comments:

The Winegar's said...

Fun times. I wish that we had neat things like that to do here: covered bridges to fine, berry picking, maple syrup time etc. I'm so happy that you and the girls can experience all that. Love you.

Katie Bell said...

Looks like soo much fun! I wish we would have gone!!! Dang it! next year I guess.

Corinne said...

Looks like fun! Liam just tried cotton candy and he hated it. Really, who hates cotton candy?

I am glad that there is so much to do...

Miss you!

The Hilton Family~ said...

How great that there is so much to do back there. It definitely helps pass the time i'm sure. Love all the pics, and can't wait to see you when you come home :)

Dan and Jen said...

Maple sugar cotton candy? That sounds delightful! (I read Corinne's comment... Sawyer is not a big fan of cotton candy either. I think he likes the taste, but as soon as he gets it to his mouth the texture freaks him out. It's hilarious!)

Cute pictures. You guys are all matchy, matchy in your red and white (who doesn't LOVE those colors, by the way?)

I'm glad that you are having a blast in New Hampshire. It looks like a fabulous place!

Lori Passey said...

Looks like you're having a great time in NH! Just plugging away at school...I'll be done in May...2011!!! One more year!