Cabane a Sucre / Sugar Shack Time

---

Spring is starting to emerge here. Two weeks ago it was warm and the maple sap started to flow. Last week it turned a bit cold again later in the week and they have stopped flowing briefly, but the Cabanes à sucre (Sugar Shacks) are now open and since we didn't have much on this weekend we decided we should check one out. We discovered that at the last minute it can be tough to find one that has space, but we did get a spot at the Érablière (maple farm) between here and Pont Rouge called La Bonne Fourchette (the Good Fork). They didn't have the kids activities and demos of the maple production that the busier ones have, but they did have pretty good food and lots of it, so it was a good first event. This one seemed to have its main crowd for dinner as they have live music etc in the afternoons and evenings.

Outside the sugar shack they have some of their trees tapped with the old fashioned aluminum buckets. The boys thought these were pretty neat and were checking for maple water in them. Because it has been cold the last couple of days the sap wasn't flowing and what was in them was frozen. Now a days on a larger Érablière they don't actually use the buckets for the main production. All the trees are connected to plastic tubing and the sap free flows into the tubing and gravity then flows it back to the main produciton facility or to another collection point on the farm. You can spot the Érablières all year long by the characteristic blue tubing running through the forest.

The inside of the Sugar Shack is kind of like a community hall. They typically can seat about 200 people or more at a time. You eat at long communal tables. Food is served to your group in family servings (large bowls to dish yourself). It is all you can eat. The amount of items that come out is pretty impressive and pretty much everything is served with or in maple syrup. From what I saw on-line and Claude's previous sugar shack visits, the menus are all fairly similar with each one having some personal variations.
The menu at the Bonne Fourchette was: (assuming I haven't forgotten anything)
bread
Pea soup
Pork and beans
tourtière (Meat pie)
Omelette with bacon and maple syrup
Eggs cooked in maple syrup
Oreilles de crisse (Salted pork crisps) direct translation is "Christ's Ears" - not sure why
Ham and sausage in maple syrup
boiled potatoes
cole slaw
and fried Pancakes with maple syrup for dessert
Tea - Coffee - Milk

Once you have eaten enough for a week, you roll outside and do the tire sur la neige - maple taffy in the snow. This is the very best part. They pour hot thickened maple syrup into snow that is packed into troughs and then you use popsicle sticks and wrap the Tire around the stick and eat it. The snow makes it fairly firm but it melts in your mouth and mixed with the snow crystals is really yummy. Even M who isn't that much of a maple fan, really liked it.

We tried to pace ourselves and not have too much of anything but even with that we didn't need lunch and only had a very small soup for supper that night. I think our favorite dish of the meal was the tourtière, and then P and I really liked the pancakes at the end. They were a bit greasy but they reminded me of little versions of beaver tail pastries from Ottawa. We will try to do another sugar shack visit where the boys can see how the maple sap is cooked down to make syrup. And P really wants to take his cousins to visit one when they come at Easter.

We had planned to do a big walk in Pont Rouge after the meal, but the wind was freezing cold. Instead we decided to do a driving tour along the St. Lawrence river on the Chemin du Roy (Kings road). This was the original road connecting Quebec to Trois Rivieres and then Montreal built back in the early 1700s I think. There are some beautiful churches and old farm buildings along it.

Back home the boys really wanted to try out the new t-ball stand we got them so we played a bit of snow base ball, until we were too frozen. This week is shaping up to be much warmer than the weekend. Today (Tuesday), it was really nice in the afternoon (sunny and above zero) and the snow was really starting to melt alot. We had a much warmer ball game on the driveway today.

---

Photos

Outside view of The Bonne Fourchette sugar shack.
White with red trim is a very common color here for both sugar shacks and barns.