Last Saturday we made our yearly pilgrimage to Bascom’s Maple Farm in Alstead, NH for some minor supplies. This is a 3-hour round trip for us and kills a Saturday morning but I think it’s a neat adventure for the kids.
We buy all of our glass here and in this years maple catalog there were these awesome new mason jar mugs for less than $9.00/dozen. I was thinking that these would make really good beverage glasses, so we picked up a dozen for the house and and dozen for some future syrup! These glasses are the perfect size for an iced tea!
Our goal this year is to submit some of our syrup to the local fair’s for judging. Our hope is that we will get crystal clear syrup with our new filter press and figured we should be capable of competing! Most of the contests here in New Hampshire require submitting your syrup in a 1lb Honey jar. Don’t ask me why, but we discovered this last year at the last minute and could not get our hands on one of these nifty items. This year we are prepared!
I am not sure if I will get to it prior to the sap starting to flow this year, but I have some plans to join some of my tubing together so I can put 10-15 taps on a run instead of the 5 taps that I am currently running per line. The snow, and cold temperatures may make this a project after the season is over.
In addition to all the sugaring stuff for dad, they also had some coloring books for the kids. I am hoping this could provide a temporary distraction from the dullness of weekend boiling outside.
It’s hard to feel like Spring and Sugaring Season is upon us, with today’s Nor’easter blowing through. We had a good 6-8” on the ground before a break in the snow bands and there is another 3-6” forecasted to fall later tonight. Hopefully all of this late snow will help prolong the Sugaring Season, but we will have to wait and see. The extend forecast shows a warming trend starting Tuesday, so I think the plan will be to get tapped in this weekend. Let’s hope the weekend weather is sunny and mild!
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