Another field trip today to a Maple Syrup Farm at a place called the Kortright Conservation Center. Very Interesting (much, much better than the one we went to in Nanaimo Sheila, lol) they had two main areas - one to show the modern way of getting maple syrup and a pioneer area to show how they used to do it. The kids were pretty impressed by both although I think the pioneer area won because they were giving samples of sap and of maple syrup. Sap tastes like sweetened water if you've never tasted it. The maple syrup was the best I have ever tasted. Delicious.
Below is the tank where it's all boiled in the modern times!
The picture below didn't really work out as I didn't get the tree in but all the kids were standing inside a large tree.
Eli carrying the pails in the pioneer area
Immy carrying the pails.
How they made maple syrup in the pioneer days. Eli was really interested in this as the Ingalls family in Little House in the Big Woods book make maple syrup like this so it was good for him to see it done.
Incidently if you were wondering like I was how anyone ever discovered that you get sap out of a tree - they say that no-one knows for sure but they think it would have been because Deer and probably other animals would suck at the trees so the aboriginals figured something good had to be inside the trees.
Immy checking for sap the old fashioned way in buckets. These days the tubes go straight from the trees into the sugar shack.
At the end of it they all pulled out their legoland maps and sat looking at them for ages! They enjoyed todays trip alot but I thnk Legoland yesterday was the big hit of the week!!
