TAMWORTH — If you listen intently, on a warm spring day after a cold night, you’ll hear a signature sound in the woods of New Hampshire and western Maine this time of year.
“I call it the ‘sap symphony,’ when all the sap starts dripping into the buckets on the trees, each holding different depths and making different sounds — the bing-bongs and the drip, drip drips,” said Sean McManus who has operated SP’s Sugar Shack with wife Julie in their backyard in Center Ossipee for the past 16 years.
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