It's time to collect maple sap

March 10, 2017 at 6:12AM
*FILE PHOTO*(NYT41) QUEBEC, Canada -- Feb. 3, 2009 -- QUEBEC-SUGAR-SHACK-ADV08-6 -- Sap being collected in buckets in Quebec in March 2008. Tapping sugar maples and boiling the sap might be one of winter's most enduring images. But it's one thing to glance at the tiny illustration that decorates almost every bottle of maple syrup (trees and snow, buckets and a cabin), and quite another to spend a frigid day visiting a Quebecois cabane a sucre, or sugar shack, and discover that it's all true: the
*FILE PHOTO*(NYT41) QUEBEC, Canada -- Feb. 3, 2009 -- QUEBEC-SUGAR-SHACK-ADV08-6 -- Sap being collected in buckets in Quebec in March 2008. Tapping sugar maples and boiling the sap might be one of winter's most enduring images. But it's one thing to glance at the tiny illustration that decorates almost every bottle of maple syrup (trees and snow, buckets and a cabin), and quite another to spend a frigid day visiting a Quebecois cabane a sucre, or sugar shack, and discover that it's all true: the snowy hills and horse-drawn sleigh, the buckets hanging from trees emptied by burly men with beards. Or at least that's the way it is at Sucrerie de la Montagne, a rustic compound of split-log cabins that's just a 45-minute drive from downtown Montreal but looks as though it could be from the 18th century. (Yannick Grandmont/The New York Times) (The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Maple sugaring time

Head to Pond-Dakota Mission Park for a lesson on collecting sap to turn it into something sweet and delicious. Watch the amber liquid boil down to syrup and made into maple candy for sampling. While there stroll through the historic Gideon Pond home and learn about his lifestyle in the mid-19th century. (2-4 p.m. Sun. $2. Pond-Dakota Mission Park, 401 E. 104th St., Bloomington. ci.bloomington.mn.us.)

MELISSA WALKER

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