Cedar Brook Sugar House, Malone New York

It was the last of the Maple Weekends and I went to visit the Cedar Brook sugar house near Malone, New York. It was obviously brand new and very large:

The cupola appeared to me to be purely decorative. It was lighted inside and was not used for escaping steam. As you can see, the steam was escaping from the vent right behind it:

Inside, they had set up free samples and coffee. A friendly man told me about the family's efforts to build this impressive structure:

In the next room, another man was boiling sap - and it was sure steamy:

I never figured out what was being collected in this bucket, if it was sap to be boiled again or waste. It was far too thin to be syrup:

A red light suddenly came on, but by then my camera lens was too fogged up to take any more photos, so I returned to the retail/office area:

They had many maple based items for sale in the showroom:

And everything was artfully displayed:

There was maple popcorn and maple cream:

Maple syrup and maple cotton candy:

They told me that they made maple peanut butter, which sounded great to me - but they didn't seem to have any for sale, possibly a good thing because I don't need the calories:

I had a second sugar house to visit, just a few miles away, so I left the Cedar Brook sugar house and tried driving to it. After many miles of twisting, mountainous gravel roads and dead ends, I gave up finding the second sugar house. Instead, I drove to Malone and got myself a sub for lunch, eating it on my way home:

Fine-N-Dandy Sugar House

I drove to a sugar house near the St. Lawrence River during the county's Maple Weekend but could not find it. I was on my back home, feeling discouraged, when I saw a sign pointing toward the town of Norwood which advertised a Maple Weekend Open House. Of course I headed that way and, when I got there, saw this wonderful sugar house built of logs:

I remembered that I had been there last year during St. Lawrence County's Maple Weekend but they'd built a new addition for storing maple sap out behind the sugar house since my last visit. Blue tubes transported the sap from the forest to the storage tanks beneath that roof. Mr. Finen, the owner, gave me a tour. The name, "Fine-N-Dandy," is a takeoff on his last name:

Another couple of people came to see the open house so I went inside the sugar house:

I really needed to use the outhouse but would have had to slog through a stretch of deep mud to get there. I decided that I could wait:

Inside the sugar house, there was maple syrup for sale:

And some neighbors, friends of Mr. Finen, who were hanging around and helping where they could:

The evaporator was huge, taking up most of the sugar house:

There was another room off to the side, so I headed toward the doorway:

In that room, a young couple and their two babies were sampling maple syrup, maple covered walnuts and maple cream. The maple cream, a spread with the consistency of peanut butter, was new to me so I tasted it also - and fell in love. I bought a jar of it to give my sister:

And then I went back into the main room where the evaporator was heating sap:

There were several chambers for the sap, and I believe that it progresses from one chamber to the next as it thickens - but I'm not at all sure how that works. I paid for my maple cream and some maple covered walnuts, thanked my host and headed back out to my car:

The Orebed Sugar Shack - Part 2

I was attending the open house at the Orebed Sugar Shack in Dekalb Junction (see also Part 1, posted yesterday). This was part of St. Lawrence County's "Maple Weekend." I was in the evaporation room, where this young couple was spinning maple candy to be sold to visitors:

I walked back into the main sales room, where they were selling light amber syrup, displayed along with family photos and various awards:

And medium amber syrup, displayed with tee shirts for sale below a maple sugaring quilt:

Dark amber syrup and more family photos:

And natural, handmade soaps (and more tee shirts):

I went back outside, where I saw chainsaw art on display:

And horse-drawn wagon rides, one of which was just beginning. But the day had turned cold, it had begun snowing heavily and there was a waiting line for wagon rides, so I continued on toward my car:

Along the way, I passed this chainsaw artist demonstrating his talent. I particularly liked the clever name he gave his studio, "Constance Carvings," a clever twist on the title of a K.D. Lang song:

The snow began coming down even harder as I neared my car and looked back toward the sugar house:

I passed the family's residence:

The whole place overlooked a valley, filled with farm fields:

I pulled back out onto Orebed Road, for which the sugar house had been named, a narrow dirt lane, and took one final look back at the Sugar Shack. It had been an enjoyable visit, and an insight into one of St. Lawrence County's important agricultural crops:

The Orebed Sugar Shack - Part 1

On the very first day of St. Lawrence County's "Maple Weekend," I drove 40 miles southwest to the tiny farming community of Dekalb Junction, where I attended an open house at the Orebed Sugar Shack, a maple sugar house. I parked way back off the road and walked to the sugar house, passing this lovely old barn on the way:

The sugar house was straight ahead and, judging by the number of parked cars, would be crowded:

Indeed, it was crowded inside, but I got to photograph the evaporator, where the St. Lawrence County Maple Queen was explaining the operation:

Young people were offering tours, so I accepted this young woman's offer and she led me outside for a demonstration of the old fashioned way of tapping trees - a method still widely used around here:

I noticed that chickens (or turkeys - they were awfully big) were roasting. I saw plates of hotdogs being carried around, but didn't see them for sale and never figured out who, if anyone, was eating all that food:

The next stop on my tour was at this demonstration of how it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup. I asked if there were 40 jugs there and she said, "Oh, more or less." I counted them in the picture and got a total of only 27 - some of them only half full. But it was still a good thing to learn that it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup. Hey, I remembered it, didn't I?:

Then we came to an illustration of the old fashioned way of boiling down sap to make syrup:

The sap was heated over a wood fire and progressed from one channel to the next as it thickened. The last channel had a thermometer so that it could be the final determiner of when the syrup was ready:

Outside, she showed me the modern sap collection technique. The blue lines were gravity fed transportation from the trees to the vacuum powered, larger, black lines:

All of the pipelines carried the sap to this modern collection hub, where it was then pumped into the evaporation room:

Back in the evaporation room, Bill, who appeared to be the patriarch of the operation, was explaining the process. But there was still more to see at the Orebed Sugar Shack and I'll post Part 2 tomorrow: