"Out On The Farm" at Snow's Sugarbush

Despite the early morning freezing rain and dreariness in general, we headed south/southeast about 20 minutes to Mason, MI and Snow's Sugarbush to see a working maple syrup farm/processor. It looked very much some of the other "novelty" farms we've visited - (Turkeyville, Uncle John's Cider Mill or The Country Mill) perhaps a little less developed. They have a little restaurant so we had all-you-can-eat breakfast in the "quaintly" decorated dining room. Decor ranged from pictures of tractors (not sure if you can see it, but the headlights of the tractors are actual lights. . .Classy with a capital "C"!) to an old wood-burning stove, maybe circa 1850 or so.

After eating, we went into the syrup processing area. It's too early in the year and the sap is not yet "running" and so we got an overview of the process, but didn't actually see it (bummer because I wanted to see the taps coming out of the trees!). The ideal temperature is 40 during the day and about 20 at nite and that's probably a few weeks away at this point. So took a few pictures but due to the weather (cold, high winds), didn't stay too long and didn't trek out to the forest to see the maple trees. This really is the last of the "agri-entertainment" things I wanted to see so even though I didn't see everything, it was still interesting and kind of fun - in a rural Michigan sort of way.