We get most of our maple supplies at this place a couple of hours from us.  And every year, in the spring, they host a two day open house.  We go on Friday and it’s an all day event.    There’s a store wide 10% off sale, vendors, seminars and displays.   It’s a great opportunity to talk with other maple producers and see what they do, get ideas, see new equipment, and buy supplies.   That’s why my husband goes.

The children, on the other hand, look forward to going every year for a much different reason.  They are mainly interested in the free health food…you know, things like donuts, cheetos, soda, milk, cookies and chips.  It’s stuff they don’t get very often so it’s a super big treat that they look forward to.  And once a year, at this event, I let ‘em go.

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The first thing we did upon arriving was to sell them our commercial grade syrup.  That’s the stuff that’s stronger and darker than the darkest, strongest B grade syrup.  It’s end of the season stuff when the buds are starting to come out and the weather is warm.  And yeah, it’s nasty, if I do say so myself.  It’s so thick and dark it pours out kinda slow and looks like motor oil.  Amazing.  But if I ever doubted it being worth taking the time to boil, seeing the results on Friday totally proved it’s worth.  We brought 15 gallons to them and they gave us nearly $300 for it…which just about covered the costs of the supplies we needed to buy that day!

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Then with money in our pockets and time on our hands, we split.  Jonathan and his dad headed for the supplies…

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…and his mom and I took the children to look for the donuts they’d been talking about for days.  Then we took a tour of the buildings, which is quite an experience.  Every single year I am amazed at it all.  There is SO much equipment. They have 70,000 taps there and send syrup all over the world!

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This is their first bottling station (part of it):

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And this is the newest one (for now…they’re planning to add another one this year):

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There was a room with several steel tanks full of syrup and 3 huge filter presses:

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And more huge tanks outside:

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As well as a huge evaporator being used for a demonstration:

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The warehouses are impressive.  This is just a very small portion of one:

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Inside the store we found some neat displays demonstrating a vacuum system.

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 The children love watching this one because all of a sudden water will spray out of them, making everyone jump

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We even found this electric foot-pedal operated bottle filler, which of course we had to try out.

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Then, in the afternoon, we went for a loooong walk to a farm in the area.

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The children picked tons and tons of dandelions along the way.

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I was shocked to see just how many cows were at that farm.  There’s 4,000!!

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And as you can see in the picture above, the rain had turned the place into one big mud puddle.  At least I tried to convince myself it was mud.  But the smell kind of made it hard to believe that and as we ran through a wet field to try to clean our shoes off, I admit I did thank God that we don’t live on a farm.  But, it was worth it to see the cute baby calves:

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As we packed up for the night, Jonathan opened the van door and two of the children’s balloons flew out.  They were distraught over the loss but as we buckled everyone in, this wonderful man came out of the warehouse holding the largest bunch of balloons I have ever seen.  He told the children that it was for them because they had been so good all day.  I tell you, I could have kissed the guy…well not quite, but I was incredibly thankful.  You should have see the children’s faces!!!  It totally made my day!  There were so many balloons we had trouble fitting them all in the van, despite the fact that two of our children were riding with Jonathan’s parents!  And when we got home, our house looked like this:

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It was the perfect ending to a wonderful day.