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: