Parents Visit - Day 1

Yesterday, we all headed out to celebrate the 11th Annual Vermont Maple Open House Weekend. After a delicious breakfast of homemade waffles and crepes, we packed into the car and drove out to Woodstock, Vermont to Sugarbush Farm. Sugarbush is a family run farm that specializes in both maple syrup and Vermont waxed cheeses. After stopping for a brief photo-op we headed inside to taste the different varieties of waxed cheeses. 

Glad to see I can still convince my parents and
my husband to take part in silly things. 

Once inside the store we were able to see some of the staff hand waxing the cheese bars. We were also  presented with a paper list of 14 cheeses and the question, "What would you like to sample?" Marc immediately responded, "We'll sample them all!" Which was a great idea because not only were the cheeses delicious but it was also around lunch time and was the right amount of snack to keep us going. 

Waxed Cheeses for Sampling

After sampling the cheeses we were encouraged to go outside to the sugar shack as they were only going to be boiling sap to make syrup for about a half an hour more.  

Sugar shack on the left with the steam coming out of the roof. 

As we walked towards the sugar shack the smell of maple syrup in the air became stronger and stronger. Once inside we were amazed by the size of the maple syrup making machine (I'm sure it has an actual name but this sounds much cooler). Underneath the whole machine is a fire that the maple producer keeps stocked with wood to regulate the temperature of the boiling sap. At one end of the machine is a pool of sap that boils down to become maple syrup. It takes somewhere between 40 to 50 gallons of sugar maple sap to boil down into about 1 gallon of maple syrup.

The maple syrup making machine. 

Fire!

Where the sap boils and turns into syrup.

Syrup!

After watching the syrup being made we headed back to the shop to load up on our cheeses and head back into Woodstock. We made a brief stop at the Long Trail Brewery and then wandered around downtown Woodstock before heading into Norwich for dinner at Jasper Murdock's Alehouse inside the Norwich Inn. 

It was such a fantastic day of wandering around and really getting to show my parents what Vermont is all about.

Ahhh!