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BLANCHARD - Its time for the first crop of the season! Breakneck Ridge Farm again this year is pleased to welcome the public to our sugarhouse on Maine Maple Sunday. We will be open from 10:00 ? 2:00 on Sunday, March 28. Come on over to enjoy a taste of the sEason. We have maple syrup on ice cream, maple tea, and maple cookies waiting for you. Did you know that maple syrup has 3 times the sweeting power of cane sugar; just 40 calories per tablespoon; that Maine produces a quarter of a million gallons of maple syrup each year; that it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one golden gallon of Maine maple syrup; that its all natural? Bring the family and spend come spend some time in the fresh air experiencing one of Maine�s finest crops. The native Americans were the first people to make maple sugar. They were drawing the sweet nectar from the maple trees long before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. The process of making maple syrup and sugar is a little different today and a little cleaner, but the process is fundamentally the same, that is removing the water. The natives would carve large bowls out of wood and then put hot rocks in the bowls to evaporate the water. Today the big operations have sealed oil fired units with automatic draw offs. We have added some modem equipment such as pipe lines from the trees to the holding tanks, and a filter press to remove all of the impurities. We are still burning with wood and have no hoods over the evaporator. This allows the public to smell the sweet aromas of the boiling sap as well as seeing the boiling action taking place in the pans. If you can not make Maple Sunday, call ahead, and if we are boiling feel free to come up. We do enjoy the company and I may even put you to work. |