Farewell visit to the Sucrerie

A few weeks ago we had a lovely visit from Uncle Kevin and Suzy. We thought it would be great to take them out to our favourite Sugar Shack for a delicious lunch. As in the past, we were not disappointed. Luckily, we reserved a spot ahead of time because it was FULL! In the 3 years that we have been going there, we've never had to reserve a table.

We enjoyed the usual delicious fare, traditional Quebec style, listened to the music and took in the actual sugar shack, where they boil the maple water down into syrup, the bakery, where they bake their own bread in wood-fired ovens and of course, the general store.

The pancakes were fluffy and light...and wonderful when absolutely drenched in fresh maple syrup!

The Sugar Pie is like nothing you've ever tasted!!!

Calli had a great time. She thought ahead and packed some colouring books and crayons to occupy herself while we were waiting for food. That wine bottle beside her is filled with real maple syrup. Each table gets one bottle.

If you think about it, it takes approximately 40 - 43 litres of maple water from the trees, to create one litre of actual maple syrup. That's a LOT of water! The Sucrerie de la Montagne that we tend to visit only produces enough syrup to service their guests in the restaurant, although they sell a few little bottles in the general store. This particular Sucrerie also uses traditional methods to collect the syrup, whereas the larger scale sugar shacks have modernized their collection by the use of plastic tubes that they hook up to the maple trees. These tubes lead throughout the forest back to the main buildings where the process for boiling is similar. The modern methods also use a bit of suction to try and "sap" more water from the trees, whereas the traditional method lets the tree do it's own work. I'll include a link for you to read more on it if you wish. Almost 1/2 way down the page of that link, you'll see photos of the traditional method and the modern method.
Calli enjoys taking photos with my camera now and managed to capture this one of Marin being silly. Poor Marin wasn't too thrilled with the loud music in the sugar shack building. We were seated quite close to the front, near the stage and were very close to a speaker. Marin doesn't like really loud noises like that, so she turned to me and said "Mummy, this music is making my ears tired." And with that, she layed on Adam's lap and had him cover her other ear with his hand until it was time to go.


We got a real kick out of the song on this 2nd video....Who knew that the Chicken Dance was so popular here!! In French!!



Back outside, we sampled the maple taffy, where a guy pours the warm maple taffy onto the snow and you roll it up with a popsicle stick and eat it up! It is divine! Although it can be quite sticky!

Inside the sugar shack, where they were explaining the boiling down process. Adam is holding Calli up to have a look at the taffy in the pot on top of the wood stove. Marin waited patiently for her turn and there's Kevin standing by in the blue jacket!!

A traditional collecting can attached to the tree. There is a metal spigot that is tapped into the tree and a hook which the bucket attaches to. They put the flimsy lids on there to prevent animals from going in to the buckets.
Can you spot all the buckets? There are over 2500 trees and buckets at this Sucrerie.

We missed the horse drawn trailer ride this time around, but we couldn't have asked for a better day to visit the sugar shack! Seeing as this is probably the last time we'll visit the place, we made the most of our walk back, taking in everything and storing it into our memories.

Later, we went for a walk to burn off a bit of the sugar! The snow was still here...it's all gone now. The girls loved walking through the giant puddles and investigating how high the water would go up their boots!

Our little entourage. Kevin, being run over by a stroller-wielding Marin, Calli, Suzy, Adam and Nellie.
Thanks for the visit you two!! We had so much fun!!