Maple Syrup and a Late Winter Hike

We went out on Sunday for a maple tree tapping expedition and a little hike in the winter landscape. It was cold. Thus, the goofy hat in all but one shot, and the ratty old winter coat, still hanging on to the end of the season.










"Look, Mom, no hat!" But only long enough to get the shot.




Playing in the stream, where the hike took a turn for the worse. Kel saw a pretty rock that he wanted to pick up. So he reached down to grab it -- while wearing his little cotton gloves. Oops.




Taking off the sopping cold wet gloves.






"Here you go, Mom". Thanks, son. So I traded my warm gloves for a pocket full of his wet ones and froze my own little fingers all the way back to the car.





I didn't get many photos of the actual tree tapping (too busy participating!), but here is Kel standing by the jug at one of the trees that he collected from. It had been tapped earlier and he grabbed the full jug of sap to add to the big containers being brought in to be fired down into syrup.





Kel replacing the jug onto the spile after he'd dumped its contents into the communal bottle.