Well, I went down to Duluth this past weekend to celebrate Julie's father's birthday - Bob turned 82 on Sunday.... HAPPY BIRTHDAY BOB... and in addition to a birthday celebration, it turned out to be maple syrup weekend as well.
Scot had been busy tapping the maples and we all gathered up the sap and melted it down to a fine tasting syrup. It's a long process in that if you gather 40 gallons of sap, after melting it down it will make 1 gallon of finished maple syrup product.
The photos I attached show Tom collecting sap, Julie taking up a position as "oversee-er" beside the fire in her official Minnesota Maple Costume (Plaid shirt and goofy hat), she was later joined by Kim and her mom, and finally several pics of Julie and Scott as they finalized the process with the meldown of the sap, adding the butter to flavor and prevent the product from boiling over, and finally the taste test (YUMMMMM).
It's too bad but for some reason, I never got any photos of the birthday boy. He was probably out back on his mission to blow all the leaves off the property, which he managed to do over a couple of days.
It was a glorious weekend, great food and drink, lots of card playing, good company, wonderful warm weather... ahhh needless to say, Life is Good.
I love you, btw
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