No picture, but the boys also got to drill a hole in a log and hammer in a spile… it was pretty cool! Then we saw how they tapped with wooden spiles that they were carving right on the spot:
They hollow them out using a red-hot poker. This was a really old-fashioned way of doing it! The sap drips out the wooden spile and into a hollowed out log below. Then children carry it in buckets back to the sugar camp. There was no sap today because it has been so warm that the sap ran a month ago, but they had buckets of rocks for the boys to try carrying. They would have made good farm hands!
Even Eli wanted to try; they had to shorten it to the max for him.
I held a lot of the weight of it. I didn’t want to crush him! At the sugar camp we saw how they boiled down the syrup and we got to try some maple taffy on snow.
We walked around the village:
I thought it was very cute, like a little colonial Williamsburg. We had maple teacakes (cookies) and rosewater currant teacakes, and wow, I need to get the recipe for that! They were great!
There was a chocolate-making demonstration here also and we got to try some hot cocoa. It was just wonderful, and so nice on a rainy day. I would have gladly paid for a mug of it instead of a thimbleful, but unfortunately they were only selling Swiss Miss.
We also saw lots of cooking:
Blacksmithing:
Coopering:
And a jail:
Haha, not really! This was the pharmacy; all the open buildings had this kind of railing to keep you from wandering in.
Only about half the buildings were open, but it was more than enough for us. We spent about 3 hours walking around (it’s surprisingly big) and couldn’t have done a minute more. We stopped in Scottsville for lunch to get some food in the little guy (and us) before he passed out. Not that he ate much, as usual, but it was a nice way to end a fun morning out.
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