Maple syrup and chickens

When I lived in Oklahoma I ate my pancakes or waffles with peanut butter. I never really liked syrup so if I did eat syrup, I only ate very little. Then I moved to The Great White North (TGWN) and my world got turned upside down.

When my husband and I were first dating we visited his home town here in TGWN and he took me to get the “best hot dog around”. Well the fact that this hot dog establishment was actually a truck located on a gas station parking lot in the middle of Back Woods, NH I should have know what to expect. But I was naive and I ordered chili on my dog. When I took that first bite into my dog, I was anticipating the strong, smokey flavor of spicy chili. But that’s not what I got. Of course not.  My taste buds were assaulted with a sweet, sticky chili that I could only assume was made with maple syrup. The same senario happened when I tried my husbands favorite barbecue sauce. Oh Lordy, I should have known better.

So these experiences with maple syrup lead me to believe that it was the devil’s snot (a.k.a. the grossest stuff on the planet).

But one day I was introduced to snow with maple syrup on it and my opinion started to change. So I decided to visit a maple sugar house this past weekend to see if I had this stuff pegged all wrong. But I didn’t really get a chance to become familiar with the art of maple syrup production because I was too busy making sure I didn’t get eaten by a vicious chickens. Yeah, the maple sugar house just happened to be on a chicken farm.

Oh and by the way, I’m deathly afraid of birds. So this maple sugar shack was like my bermuda triangle; birds, maple syrup, and more birds all in one place. Awesome!

So I was hoping that this post was going to be all informative on how maple syrup is made. But I can’t remember a thing the tour guy said cause I was way to busy covering all my soft parts that birds tend to peck at first. But if you are into all that educational stuff, here is the maple syrup ‘how to’ guide.

Step one: Drain the stuff from the tree

Step two: boil it down till you get syrup

So no, I’m not saying that me and maple syrup are all BFF now. But, yes, we are on far better terms than me and birds.