Sugar Bush Maple Festival

On March 10th, we drove out to Bruce's Mill Conservation Area for a Sugar Bush Maple Festival.  

They had several different activities for the kids to enjoy:  hay bales for climbing, little mazes and wagon rides.  

We waited in line for the wagon ride for a few minutes, but then saw the wagon returning after just those few minutes.  While that makes the waiting not as long, it didn't seem worth it to us to spend $2 each for a really short loop.  We thought it would drive through the maple trees to show how they were being tapped, etc., but they didn't.  It just went around a curve and back again.  Since we were really cold, we left the line and went to look at the maple trees.

They also had a man carving wood with a chainsaw.  It was cool to watch him be able to do detail work with such a large tool.

The main attraction was the Maple Syrup Trail.  Here we learned along the path how they harvest the sap from the trees, what tools they used, and fun little facts.  Sarah liked to find the little cartoon character along the trail and would run up to him and hold his hand.

Looking in the buckets to see if there was any sap...

...it's hard to tell because it's kind of clear, but there's about an inch of sap in the bottom!

We liked these guys that were periodically along the trail as well.  We think they were used to keep people on the path instead of wandering among the trees too much.

Along the way they had little demonstrations and explanations.  This stop was showing the different tools used to obtain the sap from the tree.  They had a dead tree that they let kids practice drilling in to see how it is done.

I took a video of Glenn's turn, but for some reason the sound didn't get recorded.  So you can't hear what is being said, but you can see how it is done.

Sampling some of the syrup--it was sure sweet!!

Did you know....?

One last view of the trail among the maple trees.

We were pretty cold and were happy to get back to the car.  Poor Glenn's toes were almost frozen!   So while the heater was going, he perched himself on the arm rests to get his toes as close to the heater as possible.

There were a few little vendors at the festival as well.  We bought some apple crumble and maple tarts.  They were really good!  There was some people selling local honey with different flavors mixed in.  We got to sample several but really liked the one with cinnamon-so we bought some.  Yum!

And last of all we bought some maple suckers for the kids.  Goodness, they were good!  

The festival also had a little diner in which you could get some pancakes with maple syrup.  It was kind of expensive, so after we finished at the festival, we went down the road a little ways to a small diner.  We ordered pancakes, an Hawaiian omelet as well as scrambled eggs with sausage--all for about the same price as what we would've paid for a couple of pancakes to share at the festival.  So even though we didn't have the actual experience at the festival, we figured we would get the same kind of food--maple syrup included--for a better price.

Despite the cold temperatures, the on-off snowing, and the frozen toes, we had a good day.  We bought tickets online which are good at any of the four locations where they have these maple groves.  So we might go to another one when it's a bit warmer.  We'll see... Hope you enjoy learning about maple syrup like we did!