Happy St. Patrick's Day!

While Daddy was working (it is tax season, you know), the kids and I had some fun on St. Patrick's Day!  First, we headed to "The Landing" in Shakopee along the Minnesota River for the "Maple Syruping through History" event.  We have done 2 different maple syruping events in past years in Bloomington and Prior Lake, but this one had all sorts of added fun activities and learning.

First, we took a horse drawn trolley out to the sugar bush.

We had a beautiful day to enjoy the outdoors. Temperatures were between 40 and 48 degrees and the sun was shining brightly!

We learned about identifying the different types of trees, how the trees make the sugar in their sap, how to tap the trees, make the syrup, etc. then we hiked out to the sugar bush to tap a tree and collect syrup.  The sugar bush by the river is in a flood plain, so there are silver maples there (as opposed to the sugar maples in the other areas we visited in the past). The silver maples have bark that looks like strips of bacon and has 2% sugar in the sap vs. 4% sugar in the sugar maples. You need 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup and 1 gallon of syrup can be made in to 1 pound of maple sugar!

Sarah checking out the tree and her list of scavenger hunt items to find.

Time to drill in to the tree.

Trevor's turn.

Hammering in the spile.

Taste testing the drips of sap.

We collected buckets full of sap from the trees that were previously tapped.

Trevor was excited to get to carry a bucket of sap back to the sugar shack.

The kids could all fit in a big hollowed out tree along the river bank.

Pouring their buckets into the strainer (to get the bits of sticks, etc. out before it is boiled down to syrup). 

After that, we learned how to play a game with sticks that the Native Americans used to play. You use the long sticks to toss the 2 small sticks tied together back and forth. 

Nice catch, Sarah!

Then we walked down the path to a pioneer showing us how they used birch bark to build carrying containers, hollowed out logs as troughs to boil the sap in, and antlers to transport hot rocks from the fire into the trough to get the sap hot enough to boil into syrup.

We then headed into the log cabin built in 1844 to learn about how they make maple sugar from the syrup and all the things that the pioneers and Native Americans used the maple sugar for.

Sarah enjoying her sample of the maple sugar.

Watching the syrup turn to a thick peanut butter consistency dark brown substance that will become the maple sugar.  (I was only a little anxious that one of the kids would touch the VERY hot metal wood burning stove!)

Pouring out the hot sugar.

She stirred it around in this dish while it cooled and crystalized into sugar. The dish absorbs some of the moisture and it starts to get crumbly as it cools.

After that, we walked down the road to a farmhouse with barns and learned how the early settlers survived back before Minnesota even became a state.  The family who settled there built a small shed first and lived in it with their animals and equipment through the first winter until they could build their house.  I can't imagine surviving the harsh Minnesota winter in such conditions.

Trevor checking out the chickens. 

Learning about the cows from a pioneer woman.

The kids had a blast feeding the cows some hay.

Then we made a craft out of paper that flies and rotates like the "helicopter" seed pods that fall from the maple trees.  Then we visited the one room schoolhouse.  The kids loved it and didn't want to leave!  They got to sit at the desks, write on the slates with chalk, check out the reader books the kids learned from in 1889, and did some math to calculate that a family of 5 would need 4,500 gallons of sap to make 112.5 pounds of maple sugar that they would need for a year.

We took the trolley back to the car, then headed home for some clean clothes (we were quite muddy) and some lunch.  We decided to have green pancakes because it was St. Patrick's Day and because we had just spent the morning learning all about maple syrup!

We went grocery shopping and came back with some more St. Patrick's Day treats - Shamrock Shakes!

On Sunday, we went to Church, then had lunch out, before heading to Children's Theater Company to see "The Wiz".  What a fun weekend!