Stanley's Farm
This weekend, I visited Stanley's Olde Maple Lane Farm with my family. The farm's located in Edwards, a rural community south of Ottawa, which I'd never been to before. It was 8°C and rainy, but we had a good time.
Stanley's main attraction is their sugar bush, which visitors can go through on a tractor ride. The ride was lovely and took a good 15 minutes. It went around much of the farm, not just through the sugar bush, and took us by the fields where the animals were. We saw horses, cows, donkeys, and sheep.
We also saw animals at the barn. There was a two-day-old calf suckling nonstop. The calf's tail was up, which we were told was a sign of happiness. And there was a very pregnant ewe lying down in her stall. We could see the lamb(s) kicking inside her. She looked exhausted, but was still a few weeks away from lambing.
There were walking paths through the sugar bush, but we didn't take them. We were a little pressed for time and did not dress appropriately for trudging through the mud and melting snow. We were also a little let down that we couldn't collect sap from the tapped trees like they let guests do at The Log Farm.
But the highlight of the visit was the historical sugar shack. It's a structure from the early 20th century that they keep running to entertain guests. The gentleman tending the fire told us it was the first boil of the year. The sweet vapour of evaporating sap permeated the air in and around the shack. It was very special, like being inside a cloud of maple syrup.