I've lived in Maine officially for a little over 9 years now. Until recently, I had never heard of Maine Maple Sunday. In fact, some people who have lived here all their lives had never heard of or attended this statewide event. Finally, this year we decided to venture out and see what the hype was about. There's a very helpful website (
http://www.mainemapleproducers.com/maine-maple-sunday-map.html) where you can find a sugar shack near you. We decided to drive about 25 minutes to Sabattus to Jillson's Farm.
http://jillsonfarm.com/ Before we headed out, I asked Joe "Do you want to do the pancake breakfast there or just grab something on the way?" "Nope," he said, "I'm hungry now." So after a quick stop at my favorite place, Tim Horton's, we were on our way. When we first turned down the road to Jillson's, Joe let out a big groan. There were cars lining the road on both sides and as we approached the farm, we saw a huge line spilling out the door to the very small building in which you can sit down and enjoy a very large pancake breakfast (if you feel like waiting an hour or more...). At that moment, I was very happy that Joe had turned down the idea of waiting and eating breakfast there even though I had really been looking forward to it.
Thinking Joe was going to turn around and head home (he's not one for crowds), he finally found a spot to park. We grabbed the stroller out of the back and headed down the road. We quickly got into a line heading into a greenhouse not knowing what it was for and were informed if we waited we could get free ice cream. Yup, my favorite words - 'free' and 'ice cream.'
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| Waiting for ice cream |
Surprisingly, we didn't have to wait very long and once we got inside the heated greenhouse, we were happy to find it was a very comfortable 80 degrees in there! :) Not only was there delicious free maple ice cream topped with warm maple syrup, but they were also selling a variety of maple syrup products - lollipops, kettle corn, candy, and maple syrup taffy. They were making the taffy right in front of you - there was a slab of snow on the table and they were boiling the syrup behind them. Then they'd take the heated syrup, pour it on top of the cold snow in swirls and drag a popsicle stick across it, curling the syrup around stick. So cool. (And as Joe pointed out, he could just make me that at home) But I grabbed a stick of taffy to go with my ice cream. We hung out a while in the warm greenhouse, enjoying our treats.
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Mmmmm....I like ice cream!
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Then we headed back out into the cold, windy day to explore more of the farm. We spotted some oxen up in front of a big red barn and made our way up there.
We ventured inside the barn to visit with some more farm animals. There were bunnies, a horse, a goat, 2 cows, some turkeys, a goose, a momma pig and her tiny newborn babies, and 2 male pigs. Nolan really loved the bunnies. So much so Daddy is promising Nolan a bunny when he gets older. Momma is not sure she supports this. The turkeys and goose were pretty noisy and Nolan wasn't too sure how he felt about them. He was very interested in the cows as well (even if they were stinky).
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| Momma pig and her babies |
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| Hanging with the cows |
After checking out the chicken coop and pausing for a picture with an old tractor, we decided we were ready to head home. So despite the cold wind and the crowds, it was a fun morning. And after that ice cream, someone decided with a big grin that he wasn't going to be taking a nap when we got home...complete with clapping hands.
