Hello, Eric again. A surprising number (one) of people (a co-worker of Kari’s) commented on how much they liked the maple syrup posts and wanted to know where we were going this week. Earlier, before all these people (person) wanted more maple, we had discussed visiting a different sugar shack each week until the maple syrup season was over. So, to all of those people (person), here’s that post you’ve been clamoring for drenched in 100% pure Massachusetts maple syrup.
First though, an interesting side-note. We went out yesterday to find a geocache (more about that later) and parked beside the bike path in the next town over. As we were about to get out of the car, we looked up and saw Steve Holt (STEVE HOLT!) from last week’s post, ride up on a bike and stop to let his friends catch up to him. He told us he was biking to burn off all of the maple sugar he ate. He must have eaten a lot of sugar because half an hour later, we were taking a winding, wooded scenic route back home when we ended up driving past a biker, who was none other than Steve Holt(!).
Ok, now back to today. We drove up to Deerfield to have breakfast at the Williams Farm Sugarhouse. Like the others we’ve been to, it’s located in a converted barn-y-type-building, and had the billowing clouds of sweet-smelling steam puffing away out of the roof. It was quite inviting.
It was somewhat no-frills, in that you went to the counter to order, found a seat, and when it was ready, they would yell out the number on your receipt. After the unsmiling girl took our order, we found some stools by the door and read the wall which was covered in old newspaper clippings of this sugar shack from the 1980’s. After an extra long time had passed, and many numbers after ours had been called, we went up and the girl told us it would be out in a few minutes. A few minutes later, we went back and it was discovered that they lost our order. With a shrug the girl said it would be out in five minutes. Twenty minutes later, they finally called us and, hooray, breakfast!
Kari had the waffle, which was the best she’d ever had. An ever-so-slightly crispy outer shell with a perfectly moist and chewy interior, this waffle had a great buttery taste. My pancake was equally good, although I could have done without the hair that was poking out from under it. The sausages were good, and the eggs were kind of bland. But wow, those waffles, pancakes, and fresh syrup were great!
After eating, we checked out the boiling room.
These are forms this family used to make maple sugar candy from the 1830’s to the 1930’s.
And jugs of syrup. These are not from the 1830’s, but it is the third example in a row where we’ve seen artwork of the sugar shack we’ve been to (see the below posts).
I love it when it’s so smoky you can’t see the ceiling.
After breakfast, we went around the corner to Historic Deerfield. We took some pictures of houses…
These guys aren’t working in the garden because it’s Sunday.
…and we went geocaching.
If you don’t know what geocaching is, check out this two-minute video called What is Geocaching? Basically, it’s a high-tech treasure hunt where you use a GPS device to find a cache (a container with a log book) that someone hid. Geocaching is a lot of fun. We’ve been to so many neat and interesting new places that we’d never have seen to if it weren’t for geocaching. Anyway, we went to find a cache called Burying Ground that was hidden in the very old cemetery in Historic Deerfield.
The GPS pointed to our right, and we spotted it from thirty feet away (or, ten meters if you favor [favour?] the metric system). Can you see the cache in this picture?
There it is!
This cache was a small one that was just large enough for the log.
We prefer the larger caches that hold tons of stuff, like this one we found on Saturday off the bike trail in Florence.
That’s all the maple-y goodness for this week. Next week I’ll be posting about a super-secret, invite-only, very exclusive sugar shack nestled in the woods near the Quabbin Reservoir. It’s going to be awesome.
