Easter in the North Country

March gave way to April quite beautifully. Laurel hit the sidewalks (quite hard a few times) with her bicycyle. Just a little over a week ago we rejoiced as we discovered a sidewalk connecting the driveway to our side entrance. It had been buried under snow and ice and we honestly had no idea it was there until recently. Soiled was trucked into our neighborhood to fill in our yards in preparation for grass. And then it started to snow. That was last Wednesday.

Today is Easter Sunday and it is still snowing. Now some of that snow has melted a bit due to occasional quick appearances by the sun but still, it did not feel like Easter Sunday as we slogged thru sometimes heavy snow to church this morning. It did, though, make yesterday's Egg Hunt quite interesting. It's actually a bit difficult to conceal bright orange, yellow, green and blue eggs on white snow without completely burying them. Bruce help members of our church hide 2,000 of them in the park in nearby Carthage. After filling her basket Laurel went sledding. Certainly, this has, for us at least, been a memorable Easter.

A peek into local tradition

A couple of weeks ago Laurel and I participated in a North Country late winter celebration....the annual Maple Syrup Harvest. Along with new friends Jesse, Brenda and Olivia King, we sampled maple cotton candy, maple sugar cakes, and fresh syrup. We also were able to witness the process of transformation from tree sap to sweet amber syrup. The day was cold and snowy but we warmed our hands on the way back to Fort Drum with a warm jug of sweet amber perfection that had been in the tree just the day before....How awesome is that!

So...what did we learn?

• It takes roughly 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup!
• The shed in which the sap is boiled down is called a sugar shack or sugarhouse.
• A group of sugar maples is called a sugarbush.
• A healthy sugar maple tree can grow to the grand old age of 200 years and more!
• Once the trees start to leaf out the sap can no longer be collected for syrup.
• Late winter is a great time for the sap to run because of alternating warm and cold spells.
• Pancake syrup is NOT maple syrup. It's primarily corn syrup.

A sugarmaker checks the consistency of the boiled sap. The more it boils, the thicker and sweeter the sap becomes. Once the sap is 2/3 sugar it turns into syrup. After that it is run thru a paper or cloth filter then siphoned into jugs or bottles.

Laurel and Olivia particularly enjoyed the maple cotton candy.