Last week we drove up to my brother Josh Seidman’s maple syrup farm to observe a full totality solar eclipse! I anticipated this trip for years knowing the eclipse would go right through his town on April 8th.
You can check out some cool time lapses and footage I took in my latest video. Sadly the YouTube algorithm doesn’t think my subscribers want to see this so hopefully you’ll give it a watch from this post!
Witnessing a full solar eclipse was an amazing experience. It is not only seen – it is also felt as the temperature drops, the wind shifts, and everything takes on an other worldly weirdness as the world get progressively darker. My favorite moment of the eclipse was watching my kids experience it!
Totality was stunning both in its beauty but also its very sudden arrival. As long as there’s a little sliver of sun there’s still some illumination, but once the moon fully covers up the sun it immediately turns to night. We could see solar prominences poking out for the three or so minutes that the eclipse was in totality. Then as quickly as the sunlight faded out, it began to fade back in as the moon moved out of the way.
The eclipse also coincided with the maple sugar season and Josh went right back to work in his sugar shack. In previous videos we took a look at how the maple sap goes from the trees into his shack, but this time we got to see the evaporating process in action! You can see it all in the video above.
Josh’s process is a mix of science, art, chemistry and flow control. It’s far from a mechanized process to get a perfect batch of syrup – it requires lots of focus, attention and a loving touch to get things just right.
You can check out Josh’s syrup at RuggedRidgeForest.com. His most popular offering is a sampler of different grades that can help you find the taste you’re looking for!