Thursday 1 May 2008

Maple Sugar Bush is Bad For My Health

I’ve lived here in Lanark County for more than three years now, and had yet to visit a maple sugar bush.

One of Peter’s soccer teams was going to Fulton’s for a team-building, fun kind of afternoon. I was invited along because I’m cool (okay, Peter felt sorry for me because I’d never been to a sugar bush, but being cool sounds so much better).

Last Saturday afternoon was a beautiful, warm and sunny day. If nothing else, it was definitely a day for being outside. Maple syrup, here we come!

Peter and I arrived at the same time a player and her mother showed up. We didn’t have to wait much longer than 15 minutes for a bevy of beautiful young ladies and a myriad of parents to show up for some maple fun.

First, we went for breakfast in the restaurant. When I say there was maple everything, I mean it. Of course, chances are, most of you have already been to a sugar bush, and everything I’m telling you is old news. Maple muffins, cookies, candies and pies. Oy, so much maple. I started with a pancake and sausage breakfast.

It was all going fine until I tried to put maple syrup on my pancake.

Holding the tray with the plate on it and trying to get the syrup to hit my pancake as it lay on the plate was trickier than it looked. One gentle push on the syrup pump had syrup squirting across my tray and onto my foot. Dang it, missed the pancake completely. The second pump of syrup landed nicely on my tray, but nowhere near my plate. Fine. The third try squirt a strip of syrup across my hand and YES! My pancake! I glanced around to make sure nobody was watching.

Unfortunately for me, a young employee was waiting patiently for me to stop giggling and notice her.

“Um, you might want to use one of the cups there. Most people just put the syrup in the cup first.”

Oh.

So that round of fun was over. I never did get a cup, but managed to land enough syrup on my plate to move my pancake around and find it.

Next, was a quick trip on the wagon down some muddy, rutted road. I know exactly what the horses were thinking as they dragged the wagon through the melted slush and snow. They’re thinking that it’s a beautiful day and why in the world do they have to drag us over-sugared humans through the forest when there are snow-less fields to be run through?

Mush, horsie. Mush.

Maybe you’ll get some nice maple carrots when you’re done. Luckily for them, we were the second to the last wagon ride of the day.

Next, maple taffy. Can I just tell you that maple taffy is a hazard to one’s health? I’m not sure I have any fillings left in my teeth, and the sugar crash that hit later in the afternoon led to an unnecessarily long nap. But then again, I do love my naps.

The sugar bush was really fun. Peter’s soccer team (holla to the TNT Extreme and all the cool parents that showed up) was great fun, but again, maybe it was all the sugar.