774 July 8, 2022 Bethel, Maine

I took a walk bright and early this morning. I walked on winding narrow country lanes. I saw this bear carcass beside the road.

At 8:30, we were scheduled for our tour at the sugar house.

We met Lisa and her son, Michael. Michael gave us an excellent tour and education on the production of real maple syrup. Happy Hill Maple Farms harvests sap from 21,000 tapped maple trees. Much of the work involved is maintaining the lines that direct the sap from the forest to the bottom of the hill. Lines are often damaged by wind and storms and fallen trees. Animals including squirrels, bears, and moose also wreak havoc. The lines must be vacuum sealed in order to use suction to draw sap from the trees. The bulk of the harvest occurs during an 8 week span in March and April. The first sap draws are lighter in color. As the ground warms, the minerals are drawn from the soil and into the sap, producing richer and darker syrups. In a single season, Happy Hill collects about 325,000 gallons of sap. It takes 40-80 gallons of sap to produce one gallon of pure maple syrup. The process is highly technical and involves the use of reverse osmosis and boiling. We love staying on working farms. It is enlightening to learn where our food actually comes from. This family is hard working and even though the harvest is for a very short time, there is a lot to do during the other months of the year.

Lisa did a tasting with us, allowing us to try the various grades of syrup. We tried some syrups aged in bourbon and whiskey barrels and we tried syrup infused with lavendar. This farm has a deal with a bourbon distillery in Florida. The distillery provides bourbon barrels to age syrup. When the syrup has been bottled, the farm takes the barrels back to the distillery to use for maple flavored bourbons. The farm also makes maple creams. These are more solid spreadable forms of the maple sugars.

Log Cabin syrup and other similar brands are NOT real maple syrup. They are made from artificial ingredients and chemicals meant to taste like maple. When you buy real maple syrup from a store, it only has to contain 2% real maple syrup to be labeled REAL. When you buy pure maple syrup from Happy Hill…it is the REAL deal. It is costly to produce and expensive to purchase. We also learned that pure maple syrup has a lot of antioxidants and minerals.

With the sugar buzz well underway, we went shopping. We chose the grade A dark color syrup with a robust flavor, we chose some bourbon barrel aged syrup, and we chose some cinnamon maple cream.

We stored our purchases and got on the road. Before we left, I had noticed that the rear of the RV seemed to be sitting a little lower than normal. Tim noticed that the air gauges were not reading as they normally did. Once we were traveling, we noticed that our ride was rougher than usual. We thought we had a problem with our air ride suspension.

We found a deisel mechanic shop in the town of Gorham. The guy there took the time to help diagnose our problem. There is definitely a leak. His shop was not able to have the parts we might need and they suggested that we call Frieghtliner in Bangor, Maine and in the meantime to drive carefully. They did not charge us at all and they wished us well as we left.

We are staying at Bethel Outdoor Adventure and Campground in Bethel, Maine. Tim was able to call Freightliner but they cannot see us until next Friday. They have however, ordered the parts we might need and will have them there when we arrive. Until then, we will stay here in Bethel. There seems to be a lot to see and do in the area and it will be nice to have this as a springboard to explore!

This evening, we went to Brian’s for dinner. We had a delicious meal!

We will NOT be here this winter to verify this statement but the weather is perfect right now!