Maple Syrup Festival

This past weekend, Salem, IN had their yearly Maple Syprup Festival.  We have heard a lot about it but have never actually been to one.  So this year we decided we really wanted to go.  Saturday was cloudy and a bit chilly, but with high hopes we headed to the Festival anyway.

What a wonderful place!!  We got to see how trees were tapped for sap and how the Indians and the Pioneers made Maple Syrup and Sugar.  The smells were awesome!!

The kids each got to make their very own candles, just like they used to be made.

They also got to feed a Llama.  Azariah loved it.  He giggled when the Llama ate from his hand.  Glorianna wouldn’t try at all.  She just clung to Trevor for dear life.  Zion tried and kept pulling his hand back.  He finally let the Llama eat a few pieces of food before he dropped his hand again.

The food there is awesome!  We’d go back again, just for the food.  We arrived at the festival right around lunch time, so we decided to just eat first and sight see after.  Boy were we glad we did.  We all had breakfast for lunch just for the fun of it.  The kids each had pancakes with yummy maple syrup, Trevor had waffles with apples, ice cream and syrup, I had waffles with blue berries and whipped cream.  Wow!!  Much better then anything you’d get around here.  We’re hoping to go back this coming weekend, and try the luch food this time, but it’s supposed to rain, so we don’t know if we will get to or not.  But we will most definalty make this a yearly event.

Here’s the way the Indian’s made Maple Sugar.  They heated the rocks in the fire until they were super hot, then they added them to a hollowed out log filled with sap.  The rocks caused the sap to boil and sugar formed on the rocks.

The boys had fun trying to knock each other off of a log with bags of corn.

Zion’s favorite thing to do was “hatchet throwing”.  This made me very nervous.  I had to finally make him stop so I could enjoy the rest of the day.

We had a wonderful time.  Even if I was frozen solid by the time we left.  We bought a small bottle of  the yummy maple syrup and of course I had to make pancakes the next morning so the kids could have some syrup.