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"Families stick together when maple sugaring.At least that is the case for Chris Coulter and his 13-year-old daughter, Abby.The two form a father-daughter maple manufacturing team at this time of year, tapping the maple trees in their neighborhood, hauling 5-gallon buckets of sap and stuffing a fire box to boil syrup down.Most of the proceeds of their small production -- which this year could be about 16 gallons -- go to help provide heating assistance for neighbors in need, through the Melvin Village Community Church.The process always involves new discoveries.\"This year, we even invented maple bark,\" laughed Chris, as he handed around maple candy broken into bits, the left-overs of the fondant process used to make maple candy in molds.It began fairly simply as a family activity for the Coulters, after visiting the Hunter farm nearby and seeing a large-scale production of the process of sugaring.While the three Coulter girls did it for a while, Abby, the youngest, has stuck with it.\"I've been doing this longer than I can remember. I think I was about two when I started,\" she said. Now, maple sugaring is now in her blood and something she looks forward to at the end of each long winter.She enjoys sharing her interest with her friends at school.For her father, who in the summer is more busy as general manager of Bald Peak Colony Club, sugaring is a wonderful hobby and family activity which has both history and continues a connection to the land.He also finds it very social and a way to get to know neighbors.This is turning out to be a perfect maple season for many like the Coulters.This weekend the sugar house behind their Tuftonboro home and more than 100 like them across the state will be open for the 18th Annual NH Maple Producers Maple Weekend, March 23 and 24.The tours are free and often involve tasting of that sweet treat from the tree.From sugar-on-snow, to pancake roll ups, you will get plenty to taste and you can even fill up on some facts you may not know:-- Native Americans in this area used hot rocks dropped into sap to help reduce the water content to make sugar.-- Ben Franklin was a big proponent of maple production.-- The best side of a tree to tap is the south side, which is warmer.These are just a few of the facts I picked up last Sunday when I went with my friends Jerry and Grace Bird to visit the Coulters.According to the state Agriculture Department, New Hampshire, on average, produces 69,000 gallons of maple syrup a year with about 300 manufacturers and more than 1,000 \"backyard\" operations like the Coulters.The family built a new sugar house, last year, which will be open from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday for Maple Weekend activities. The sugar house is at 99 Tuftonboro Neck Road, in the picturesque village of Mirror Lake. It is about 14 feet by 16 feet with a concrete floor and outdoor wood box. It has a \"half-pint\" evaporator, perfect size. Chris said, for a 50-bucket operation like theirs.He notes that in the first year of production he spent less than $50 on materials needed to make about a gallon of syrup. It included some Ball jars, some propane and things he had around the house like a box fan to vent the garage.\"It can really be very inexpensive to try this stuff out,\" he said. The folks to learn from are those who are operating the maple houses which are open this weekend.For a list of many of the participating maple houses visithttp://www.nhmapleproducers.com/mapleweekend/weekend.html or just drive around the state until you see the smoke rising from one of these sugar houses, and stop in.Paula Tracy writes about the outdoors for wmur.com and can be reached at paulatracy@roadrunner.com."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.wmur.com/article/tuftonboro-dad-daughter-to-share-sweet-hobby-this-maple-weekend/5180375>