Last week was March Break and we visited Agape Valley to tour their sugar bush and enjoy some pancakes! Our tour was led by a young gentleman, also named Ben, from our chapel (Thorold South Gospel Chapel) who did an excellent job! In the photo above he is explaining how you need 40 buckets of sap to make 1 bucket of syrup. He explained that right now the syrup content was weaker and they actually needed closer to 90 buckets of sap to make 1 bucket of syrup. The people at Agape Valley say they have made about 60% of what they made last year.
We got to see the old fashioned way of collecting sap in buckets, and then the modern system with tubes that feed into a pipe that runs right into the evaporator. We also saw a demonstration of how the pioneers made syrup by boiling sap in large cauldrons over a fire (below).
It was very warm while we were there! I saw people in tank tops and shorts, and they looked very comfortable! In fact, it was so warm we decided to eat our pancakes inside, so we could be in a shady place. Lots of people were enjoying the sunshine outside, but we hadn't brought our hats or sunscreen.
The syrup tasted great, and we also bought some honey to bring home (Agape Valley also has several hives), so we consider our outing a sweet sucess!
2 comments:
I didn't know there were any sugar bushes open this year! I guess I should have done some research. Oh well. It looks like you had a fun day!
How fun! (and delicious!) We miss going to the sugar bush every year - this year we had to settle for reading about it from a book. Not quite the same! Enjoy your maple syrup and honey!
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