The Potter Tioga Maple Weekend is coming up fast and we'll have sap boiling in time to bottle some nice, freshly made maple syrup!
We'll have lots of sample recipes for you to try and a walk around our mini farmyard for the kids (I even have chicks coming a few days before the Weekend)!
Although it's listed, we're sad to say will not have the bourbon maple for sale because we sold out and we haven't made any new maple yet. Once we make the new maple and put it in the barrels we need to let it age!
It's crazy! Last year the season pretty much ended before the Maple Weekend and this year it's barely starting!
Tadd Ostraski will be set up again with his prize-winning delicious barbecue!
Come early because he sells out fast!
The snow and ice continue to come down here... but it looks like spring may start and the maple season will begin this weekend! The above freezing during the day and below freezing at night temperatures needed for a good maple sap flow are in the forecast!
Walking out to our sugar bush I noticed that the snow had the perfect fluffy texture to create what (to me) looked like bunny tails at the bottoms of slopes. Each step would start a little avalanche and it would roll it to a puffy little "tail".
The little rolling balls freaked out my dog, Ladybird.
We like to carry our maple tapping tools in a five-gallon bucket, but I got tired of fishing around for the tool I needed. I would drop the pliers that I use to pull taps in the pail, then drill my sap tap hole, then root around for the rubber mallet to pound in the tap, and then turn around and dig for the pliers that had sifted to the bottom of the bucket. So I invested in the "Bucketeer". It definitely makes it a lot easier to find the right tool. I found it on Amazon, here.
One of the things that I hate about working in the sugar bush is a nasty little growth that here in North-central Pennsylvania they call redbrush. Growing up in upstate New York, we called them "prickers". You pick which name is more fitting!
And they are all over the place. And nine times out of ten, just as you're drilling a sap tap hole one of them gets up between your thighs and starts scratching the heck out of your inner thighs. The heavy snow has held them down a bit and we have a bit more protection because the weather has been cold enough that we have to wear our winter coats, but in previous years my arms have looked like I got in a fight with a wild cat. I can tell you, there's nothing that wakes you up faster than getting goosed by one of these!
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