Tapped out and ready to boil

Happy 2024. Hopefully this finds you a few weeks into the new year still making progress on your personal improvement goal. At least on the farm we do not need to make resolutions around exercise as the next few months will be a blur of reaching 10,000 steps a day! It is January 15th as I write this. We have finished tapping and made 80 gallons of great syrup already.

As the sun decides to clock off for the day, it turns our lines into neon rave wands, ready for a night of festivities.

All Tapped Out

Sugaring is a very seasonal enterprise. We start thinking about tapping in January, trying to plan for that 6 weeks when the sap runs and all our efforts manifest into delicious syrup. What the three of us learned quickly is that the “all our efforts” part of the gig is year round. As much as we love what we do, it is with a tired soul we look forward to December 20th or so when we can stop and catch our breath. Historically, there a few weeks around year’s end that we can relax, take a trip, and breathe. The past is proving to be a poor predictor for maple. We started tapping on December 30 this year. While our rest was short, we were able to get all the taps in a week (a record), we had no snow on the ground to contend with, and we are over the moon about having two successful boils and making 80 gallons of syrup. It is cold now (or maybe I should say we are having seasonally appropriate weather) and we are all frozen up and so now we rest, sorta.

The sugarhouse is aglow with the season’s first boil.

Doing Better

Maya Angelou said, “when you know better, do better.” I do not think she was referring to maple syrup, but it applies here too. We spend a lot of time learning, knowing better, and doing better. I believe that is why we have such great products. We are always striving to make them better. To this end, Kim recently participated in the International Maple Grading School. Kim’s newly educated maple palate bottled some killer Dark Robust syrup this week. I wonder, can knowing better sometimes be a curse? Let me explain via some…

Mixed Metaphors and Confusing Comparisons

I have always believed in quality products and that adage “you get what you pay for” and maple is no exception to this. Maple syrup is like fruit, bicycles, and books in that there is a lot of variability out there. If you have had the experience of having that perfectly ripe piece of fruit, pedaling a bike that glides (that might be a power assist!), or reading that really great book, you know that not all these things are created equally. Experience and education spoil us for the good stuff and our tastes evolve over time. The same is true of maple syrup. When we were in Alaska, we thought we were very sophisticated for buying “real” (but generic) maple syrup. How our tastes have evolved! In Kim’s maple grassing class the instructors bought the same “real” maple syrup as an example of off flavor syrup! We now know we were not as sophisticated as we thought and are happily doing much better!

Kelly, in what we refer to as the "Science Corner," getting the sugar content (or brix) just right for bottling.

Exciting News

In next month’s newsletter I am looking forward to telling everyone all about Carhart and Boston Brewing’s visit to the farm. We can’t wait to host them both.

Come See Us

We actually do have one more market this year.  We will be at the Berkshire Grown Winter Market in Housatonic at the Housy Dome on Jan 20th from 10-2.  Come see us.