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We painted and wallpapered our kitchen just before selling our house and moving out of Vermont. But before we left the state, I thought it would be good for the kids to learn how real maple syrup is made. So we tapped a big maple in our yard and collected about 15 gallons of sap to boil down. (It takes a lot of sap to make a little syrup.) We put the sap in a couple of large pots on the kitchen stove and left the house for the several hours required for the boiling-down process.
When we returned, the sap had boiled down into a couple of quarts of sweet, dark maple syrup. The kids were genuinely impressed. Unfortunately, we didn’t think to ventilate during the boiling process. The kitchen was damp with condensation and most of the new wallpaper had literally been steamed off or was hanging in loose, wet strips. Today, 25 years later, none of the kids remember making maple syrup; they remember rehanging wallpaper.
