It is time for the Outdoor Play Party! The weather around here is starting to warm up during the day, but staying freezing at night. This is the perfectly wonderful time of the year when the sugar maple trees start to flow with maple syrup. If you have never tasted maple syrup before then you are missing out on a delicious experience. Every year we head out to a sugar bush...a maple syrup farm...to remind ourselves of where this syrup comes from and the history of Canada that makes maple syrup such a quintessential Canadian food. This year we visited the Mountsberg Conservation Area in Halton Region, just north-west of Toronto. It was our first time travelling to this conservation area, it was fabulous.
The Mountsberg Conservation Area has an entire Maple Towne set up. We took a short hike through the sugar maple trees, learning about the process of turning sugar water into maple syrup. We then went inside the sugar shack to check out the HUGE evapourator. The evapourator boils the sugar water at a high and consistent temperature until the water evapourates and the maple syrup is left behind. We then enjoyed some maple candy. And, of course there is always time for jumping in the snow.
A fun addition to this conservation area is there "Birds of Prey" educational park. We toured around and looked at native birds, up close and personal. Unfortunately, my youngest daughter had a minor wipe out in a gigantic puddle. Fortunately, she was wearing layers of clothing, so she hardly got wet at all.
Visiting the maple syrup farm is a sure sign that spring is just around the corner. Here are a few posts from the last Outdoor Play Party that assure me that spring is heading our way.
Over at Nature and Play the kids were out searching for hints of spring.
Fun-A-Day reminds us that with spring, comes mud, lots of mud.
Fireflies and Mudpies gives you a post filled with every detail of "growing" maple syrup in your own backyard...awesome!
So many fabulous outdoor activities and stories linked at the last outdoor play party. If you were featured this week, go ahead and grab our "Featured at the Outdoor Play Party" button for your site.
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