So we're gone to the sugarbush, eh?

How does maple syrup with pancakes sound?

Following in a long line of Canadians past, last weekend saw my rite of passage into the world of maple-syrup-eating peoples. Admittedly a little late in the season, we headed out of Ottawa in search of a sugarbush - the hallowed ground where Canada milks (taps) her maple trees for sweet sweet nectar. (Well, except that as it turns out, maple trees don't give you sweet nectar, but more about that later).

I'd tap that!

We drove to Fulton's Sugarbush, 30 minutes from Ottawa near the actually rather pretty village of Pakenham. First stop, breakfast. the question is, pancakes, or pancakes? So i had pancakes, and maple beans, and then drowned them both in the on-tap maple syrup. Mmm. Like i said, maple syrup with a side of pancakes.

At the Mapleope Crossing... 

Now buzzing we went off to explore the woods, which is what the term sugarbush kind of really refers to. Traditionally the maple was tapped into buckets which were then hauled all the way back to the camp to be boiled.

Voila...

Ok, so that's mainly frozen, dodgy-looking water, but you get the idea...

Then somebody was let loose with plastic piping and they wired up the forest like a giant cats cradle, or perhaps a limbo world championships.

Anyways, it's kind of cool - you can see the little blobs of future-maple-syrup blobbing their way down the maple tubes.

Eventually all of the maple makes it back to the camp and it poured into huuuuge vats where they boil it and boil it and boil it, and then maple thieves create a national crisis when they steal it - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19440465 - who knew that one keeps "strategic" maple syrup ("The federation also keeps nearly 13m litres in syrup in three warehouses to stabilise global supply and prices.")... huh. Or, they don't steal it and I eat it.

The end.