Making Maple Syrup: an old tradition
Ed makes syrup the way he learned at his grandmother's side. He takes his time, never takes his eyes off the evaporator, and produces prize-winning syrup every time.
Ed used to help his grandmother collect sap from buckets, the way it always used to be done. New Englanders learned how to collect and boil sap into syrup from the Native Americans who'd been doing it for countless generations before.
Though he is busy building gigantic, beautiful things with his stone mason business the rest of the year, during sugaring time, fat chance you will get a turn at that chair!
Collin knows the woods like the back of his hand. Now that we use a network of lines and hoses instead of buckets, Collin makes sure we don't lose a drop of that precious sap. His steady hand manages the tapping and the lines, protecting them from fallen trees and the deer & other curious critters who like the sweet taste of sap in winter almost as much as we do.
We are careful not to over-tap our sugar maple trees, following organic standards set to sustain the lives of these noble forests.
We call Collin the Wood Whisperer, because he is also the gifted carpenter who built our beautiful post-and-beam sugarhouse during a wicked cold spell, even for Vermont.
steamy sugarhouse at work
Here's to the Ol' Maple Tree!
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