By SUZANNE STEWART
The Pocahontas Time
(Pocahontas Times photo by Suzanne Stewart)
GREEN BANK, W.Va. — Saturday may have been a dreary, cold day, but things were steamy in the Fort Warwick sugar shack in Green Bank where visitors enjoyed a tour, lesson and taste test during the first of two Mountain State Maple Days.
Visitors were greeted by Bob and Elaine Sheets’ Great Pyrenees, Susie, as they sloshed through mud and into the sugar shack. Gathering around the fire in the rectangular brick oven and watching the maple sap boil down into a tasty sugar, guests learned the process of making maple syrup and the history of syrup in the region.
The process begins with hanging metal buckets on trees to collect the tapped sugar water. The collection is emptied into barrels, then into a metal pan resting on the brick oven where it is warmed by a crackling fire.
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