Auntie Marcie

My Aunt Marcie came to visit from San Francisco last weekend, it was a lot of fun to have her around. After school on Friday, I met everyone in Erie and we ate out at Quaker Steak & Lube, a local chain. The food's not that fab, but it's fun to eat in a place with cheesy car stuff everywhere.

Cars on the walls!

The next day, we drove up to a Maple Sugar festival in Falconer, NY, about an hour and a half from our place. Marcie is a foodie (and has been long before it became popular) and a good cook and so she timed her visit so that she could attend one of these in the area.

It all took place at this farm, we got to have a horse drawn ride, and the guy talked all about mapleing. He was pretty good and funny too. The horses were beautiful, big black draft horses.





We got demonstrations about how they tap the trees, we watched how they do the traditional bucket and also how they do a plastic tap with tubing. Most serious maplers use plastic taps and tubes instead of buckets these days.


You have to take care of the tree, can't tap right where you tapped before. And you have to make sure the old spots heal so bugs don't get in.

There was yummy stuff to eat too- maple sugar cotton candy is very good, and we had a yummy pancake breakfast, too. You could also have sugar on snow- they drizzle thick syrup over crushed ice and it hardens into candy. I remember reading about Laura Ingalls Wilder's family doing this in Little House in the Big Woods, so it was fun to see. It was quite sticky- I didn't know if I would be able to open my jaw! And they serve a dill pickle with it, which is interesting together.

Once you gather the sap, you have to condense it into syrup quickly because sap stays good for only about 12 hours. This boiler takes the water out of the sap, and you get syrup!

Do you know how much sap it takes? A LOT! It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make ONE gallon of syrup! And each tree doesn't put out that much sap, you have to tap a lot of trees. You have to have the right conditions, too- cold nights and warmer days to get the sap. Our warm winter has taken a toll on the maplers this year, few are getting much sap. Last winter was much better for the maplers.

It takes at least 40-60 years for a maple tree to reach enough maturity to be tapped, which is another problem. A lot of maples are lost to furniture, etc. Some of the trees we saw being tapped were at least 200 years old, wow!

Needless to say, we all had major sugar highs! I got dizzy walking out to the car! And learning all that makes me appreciate maple syrup!

We went out for pizza after that, one of our fave places in NY is the Ashville General, a total hole in the wall place. But they make some of the bast pizza around. It's a crazy old shack of a building, love it! And inside they did stuff like repurpose old classroom maps as window shades, it's fun.

Marcie also came to church with us Sunday, it was a nice day. Also went to our YSA testimony meeting, which was good despite their being only 4 YSA including me! Good thing I like my leaders. On Monday, I met Laura and Marcie in Erie and we saw Alice in Wonderland, which was fun. Great visuals. When we got home we had a surprise:

Easter!!

Like a week early, but oh well. My grandma had sent a bunch of stuff with Marcie so we celebrated early. Don't have to twist my arm to eat chocolate! My stuffed bunny smells like chocolate, too. The funny thing was that Marcie took caution and was able to transport a chocolate bunny with out it getting broken...and what did my mom do? She accidentally smacked it and broke it! There's a reason we use plastic cups in our house, ha ha.

Now that we did this, I forget that Easter is still this weekend! It's funny being out in the east, Easter is taken much more seriously than back home. People have Easter eggs hanging from the trees in their yard. The school children get out today for Easter weekend in all the school districts around here. We never did that back home, just had Spring Break.

We haven't seen any family in a year (since we went to CA last March) and it's been two years since Marcie came to visit last, so it was really nice to see her and have her around for a few day. You don't realize how much you love/miss someone until they reappear.