Maple Weekend In St. Lawrence And Franklin Counties

I'd been seeing online references to the two Maple Weekends for some time. But winter stayed so long that I waited for the second. Then I chose two local sugar houses who were participating. The first, the Fine-N-Dandy in Norwood, New York (St. Lawrence County), turned out to be a real, honest to gosh log cabin in the woods:

And inside the sugar house, the owner was preparing things and I was greeted by the St. Lawrence County Maple Queen:

She offered me samples of maple syrup, maple donut holes, maple sugar candy and maple covered walnuts. I chose the walnuts:

It was still cold and apparently the sap wasn't running well yet, so there was no sap boiling. A young lady warmed herself by a heater, though, as I looked around:

This may have been in an old log cabin, but the equipment looked state of the art to me:

I walked out back, where two men were discussing the modern collection system:

There was an outhouse:

And what I think used to be a sawmill but had, over the years, fallen into disuse and become a storage shed:

I bid farewell to the sugar house and hopped back into my car. My next stop was in Brushton, New York (Franklin County), about 40 miles to the east:

When I arrived at the Tower Sugar House, I once again saw no smoke or steam:

I walked around back to see the thick pipes which carried the sap to the sugar house:

And then I entered. Indeed, this was another operation with modern, impressive equipment, even though it wasn't operating yet:

I was impressed and people were friendly, but there wasn't much else to see or do. So I returned to my car and began the journey home: