Maple Sugar Festival

Our favorite local living history museum has been holding a maple sugar festival the past 2 weekends.  We have participated in maple sugar trail field trips twice but have never managed to make it out to the maple sugar festival on a regular weekend. Part of it was wanting to make sure we miss crowds but I have to say that there really were no crowds today. Perhaps the weather played a role in that since we've had a bit of a cold snap this weekend.

Bryan has been volunteering for the entire festival and enjoying himself.  This morning they were short on volunteers and Bryan called to ask if Sean could come in to help as well.  Sean was thrilled since he has been begging to be allowed to volunteer as well for quite some time.

This afternoon I took Katie, Liam, Abby, Gabe, and Ellie to museum.  It was a tad odd to be out with only 5 kids.  You quickly forget how easy it was to only manage a small crew.  We had a lot of walking to do so I'm rather glad that Robert stayed home with Alan.  Strollers aren't fun in the village due to uneven ground and Robert does not keep up with walking as easily as the other kids yet.

We visited several village shops and learned a bit about the ways maple sugar was used.  We also watched a chocolate making demonstration, sampled maple cough syrup, visited the cooper's shop to watch them make wooden buckets, sampled different types of syrup from different types of trees, and sampled maple sugar on snow candy.

The kids also made some maple leaf crafts and collected puzzle pieces for their maple passport at various houses in the village.  At the end of our tour they were able to turn the passports in for a piece of candy.

If you are wiling to pay for it, there is a wonderful pancake breakfast during the mornings of the festivals.  Bryan tells us that the pancakes were delicious (the volunteers were fed the first day) but we opted out of the pay activities this year, just using our membership for general admission.  Next year I think we will try to attend again but perhaps remember to bring some cash so we can try some maple cotton candy and popcorn or some vintage hot chocolate (made with a different form of the chocolate than we use in making hot chocolate today).

We were also able to see the pictures of the kids that are being used in the advertisements for the summer camps this year.  What can I say, the kids were cute.  Hm, wonder if that will earn us a tuition break on camp this September?