It is Maple Season here in Nova Scotia. And let me tell you, it is deeeelisious!!! I love maple syrup on just about anything you can put syrup on. And then some, if I’m speaking honestly!! I’m addicted to sweet, not going to lie!
One of my favourite places to enjoy Maple Season is at Sugar Moon Farm in Earltown. It is the best pancake house around. The atmosphere there is amazing and the food is even better. Long trestle tables with benches on either side fill the log restaurant, with a big stone fireplace in the middle to warm you up. The menu is filled with maple goodies, I highly recommend the Sugar Moon Breakfast with Sugar Moon Coffee, with maple sugar over it all! And the best part, while you wait for your meal, they serve the tastiest biscuits with sugar cream – yummy!!!
In Dad’s retirement, he has taken to tapping some of the maple trees on their new land. And we reap the benefits!! Sweet syrup on homemade pancakes with a side of bacon. Hannah loves going after school with Dad to collect the sap and lug it down to the garage, where Dad will boil it down into the tasty syrup. Hannah was quite surprised to taste the sap when Opa offered her some, it didn’t taste sweet at all, much to her sugar-loving little self!
There’s just something about climbing up the hill, and into the woods. There’s something so real in collecting the sap. It’s the promise of spring, it’s the knowledge that we have been provided for in such a simple way. That the life-blood of the trees can be such a gift to us, such a sweet gift to us!
I hope you get the chance this spring to pour some maple syrup over a hot, steaming stack of pancakes. Or even better, visit your local sugar shack and breathe in the steam of the sap thickening down into the tasty liquid gold we call Maple Syrup.
Colourfully yours,
Lori
