Maple Syrup Festival

Cowboy made a tactical error this morning.....he asked me to look at the calendar.  The calendar I selected was the one from the bank.  It lists all the festivals and goings-on in this area.  Just when I turned the page to March, I saw noted on today's square:  Maple syrup festival.  And as luck would have it, today is the final day.
I read my discovery aloud to him.
 
     "Of course, we're going,"  I smirked.
     "Get ready,"  he retorted.

So we (Cowboy, Aussie Pup, Harry and I) all jumped in the truck and headed for the Maple syrup festival!!  Ye haw!   We shared a pancake breakfast (more like brunch...since we'd had breakfast hours earlier) and sat with some new friends.  I bought some syrup in a cute maple-leaf shaped decanter.  I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff.  There were some other vendors selling their wares.  I saw the most beautiful hand-carved rolling pin!  I wish I had bought it.  It would have made my cookies and pies so much better, I think.  One couple was selling (and playing) handmade dulcimers.

After our "brunch"  we drove out to a maple syrup camp nearby to tour their sugar house.  I had seen a sign on our trip down to the festival pointing the way to the maple camp " --> 2 miles".  We turned in their direction then the road tee'd...we saw a little sign (and I mean LITTLE) that read "syrup  1-1/2 miles-->" and then an even smaller sign "syrup -->" and there it was...a little sugar shack on a dirt road.  How quaint!

The maple farmer showed us around his sugar house explaining each step of the maple syrup process.  He was very hospitable and allowed lots of questions which he patiently answered.  Their family has been in the maple syrup business since the early 1930s. !!!   The maple season is about 6 weeks long...but since this has been such a mild winter, about 4 weeks is all they'll get this year.  It takes like 60 gallons of sugar water boiled down to get one gallon of beautiful maple syrup.  Cowboy tried to talk me into buying a gallon jug of syrup...I said that I would use that much in a year!  So a decided on a quart.

So for those keeping track,  that brings us to 2 containers of syrup purchased today--one that looks like a leaf; the other, a little jug.  I'm making a batch of maple oatmeal cookies.  I've already used 1/2 of the syrup in the maple leaf decanter:

I shoulda bought the gallon!  Oh, well.  Here is the finished product:  giant maple oatmeal cookies (the recipe made 12...as you can see, there are 7 in this picture...I don't know what happened....I used to be good at math.....ok, there were 12 cookies, if Farmer's Daughter has one cookie and there are 7 cookies left, how many cookies did Cowboy eat?)  I think this recipe is a keeper!

Fun day!!