Maple Syrup Day

You may remember a few months back, we blogged about a walk through the Scarborough Marsh. The weather then was mild, but foggy. Well, we decided to take the same walk yesterday. It was quite a different story with the weather! It was clear, cold and very windy! Wind chills must have brought the temperature down into the low teens. Given the openness of the terrain, the wind was whipping! It was beautiful, but cold.


Remember the roses???

This ice berg looked like a barge from a distance.

Prior to the Marsh walk, we had driven out to Baldwin, Maine...basically north and west of Portland....to enjoy Maple Sugar Sunday. It's a day when "sugar houses" in Maine open their doors to the public to learn about how Maple Syrup is made.

The pictures are actually in reverse order, but you'll get the idea that we went from clear when we first arrived, to a snow squall that cleared the place out, in a short amount of time. The house we were visiting is called "Grandpa Joe's", and it's the fifth generation now making the syrup. "Ben" is currently at the helm, and that came about as a science project when he was a teenager. By that time the family operation had pretty much stopped as far as a comercial operation went, but he asked his grandfather to help him make syrup for his project. Ben found the more modern, evaporation equipment in a local "Uncle Henry's", a buy, sell, trade or swap guide in the area, and they were in business! Ben has kept it going since that project.

There was music, food and a maple themed bake-off which took place before we got there. The picture below is a video clip....it was good music.

This is the evaporation tank....it made the process of making maple syrup much less labor intensive. The man in the red hat is the grandson of the original Grandpa Joe. I think his name is John, and he's the one who worked with his grandson on the syrup project that got all this going again. He was a real down-home Mainer! Take a listen; not that you'll actually hear his mumblings!