I Like Thursday: Sugaring and Squawking

It's sugaring time.  Out here, the evidence is everywhere.  Buckets have suddenly sprouted on the maples in our neighborhood (in addition to the permanent tubing on some of the trees).

A neighbor down the street makes maple syrup.  His old sugar house fell apart last spring (I was told the table collapsed as he finished off his last batch).  He'd spent the summer/fall building a new one.  I saw it fired up for the first time last week - huge billows of steam rising from the roof.  Pretty cool.


Rob has been telling me about Davenports for years.  It's a restaurant open only during sugaring season.  We had breakfast there on Saturday and visited their sugar house while waiting for a table.

It takes a lot of sap to produce a jug of syrup - the sign says:  These forty quarts if filled with maple sap, would yield one quart.


This contraption boils down the sap.  It was impressive.  Valves control everything:  the sap comes in, gets warmed up, then hits the evaporating area and graduates back and forth across the pan through gates (as the boiling point changes).  Eventually maple syrup is spit out and checked for density (to make sure it's really syrup).  So the whole process is continuous; the sap isn't boiled down in batches.  I had no idea!

The syrup then goes through a filtering/pasteurizing machine (in the back right corner) and from there it's bottled. 

The walls were covered with a history of spouts, buckets, jugs and tins.  There was even a display of sugar molds.  The people working there explained how it all worked.  I enjoyed learning about the process.

Our wait over, we were seated at a table overlooking the interior of the sugar house.  Neat, eh?

I ordered a Finish pancake; Rob had a combo plate of pancake, french toast, hash browns and sausage.  Each meal came with a little bottle of Davenport's maple syrup.  It was more than enough for the meal; we brought home the extras.

The restaurant is on the farm.  This was the view from the parking lot.  So much space!

Meanwhile, back in our neighborhood... I'm finally up for walking.  Yay!  Our neighbor's dog, Roxy, joined us on Monday.  She scared the bejesus out of us by sneaking up behind us.  Roxy was minding her own business, but her presence also upset this guinea hen down the street. What squawking! 

And do you see the sap buckets on her trees?  I hear the tractor go by every day to collect the contents to bring back to the sugar house.

The turtle quilt is done!  I just photographed it yesterday - I had some good sunlight.  In the meantime - my mother gave me yards of these two border fabrics.  I've been trying to figure out what to do with them.  Not a color scheme I usually go for, but I could use them as borders.  Or do I stack and whack them and try making some kind of blocks with them?  What would you do with fabric like this?

That's my likes for the week.  I'm sharing with I Like Thursday over at Not Afraid of Color.