Another one of those Manitoulin Moments!

I was speaking to my friend Paul tonight in Windsor, and it made me think of how different my life is now compared to what it was when I was living in the city. My oil furnace is broken so here is me chopping wood and lighting a fire in my basement to heat my house.... Girls night... I hop on the quad and ride up the hill to go drinking so that I can leave my car here for hubby in the morning who wants to go to work...Did I picture myself jumping on the quad in my tight jeans and stilettos heading out for a girls night or chopping wood and lighting fires, smelt fishing in the middle of the night then spending the rest of the night gutting fish 6 years ago?? NO WAY!! It makes me laugh when I think about it which I suppose is a good thing that I am laughing and not crying. Mostly I am pretty proud of myself because I think I am a pretty resourceful gal these days!!

Me smelt fishing in my Burberry ear muffs and scarf - hey at least I do it in style!

A few weeks ago I got to enjoy something else that I would never get to do in the city... making maple syrup! Now this wasn't a 'guided tour' or anything like in St Jacobs... this was in our friends backyard while we sat around and drank beer. We decided to go 4-wheeling and ended up driving by to see if the Sheppard family were around for a visit. They have maple trees tapped all over their property for the sap to make syrup. This was all new to me... Sean living here all his life has done this before but for me a whole new experience!!! I felt like one of the kids!! And of course was taking photos the whole time for the blog!!!

the boys collecting sap from the trees....

So next you have to boil it down... I had no idea it was so much work! I was worried about having more than one beer then driving home but was told not to worry about that as we would be there for a while! Obviously I didn't think syrup ran straight from the trees but I guess I had never really put much thought into how tree sap becomes maple syrup! Well you rig a big metal pan and light a fire into it and pour a s*#t load of tree sap into it! The math is like 40-1 or something so you don't get much syrup from all that sap!

Next you boil and stir... with beer in hand of course!!!

So this is how much sap was left after it was boiled down.... I mean to start with there was 2 big garbage cans of sap emptied into the boiling pan... But it's not done yet!

Into the metal pot it goes!! It has to be finished on a propane burner so that it doesn't burn!

The boys taste testing!!!

The finished product!!!!

Is that not the most amazing thing you have ever seen? I mean just look at the colour of it! Tastes amazing too and I just experienced doing something so cool that I wouldn't have done if I didn't live here.... I got to hang out with friends in the sun with the kids having a ball playing outside and made maple syrup! I don't think it gets much better than that really!