We've still got snow on the ground, but we've had the first runs of maple sap of the season. Spring is on it's way! You can find familiar metal or the newer blue sap buckets hanging on maples all along country roads and in front of houses. You can also see flexible blue tubing criss -crossing through the sugarbush (groves of maple trees) used by larger operations to efficiently deliver sap to holding tanks.
This photo was taken along our road. The blue buckets are translucent, and I love passing by and being able to see how much sap has run and been collected in the bucket. Most sugar makers empty their buckets once a day for boiling. The best days for gathering are warm and sunny-- high 30's to low 40's--with below freezing nighttime temperatures.
Franklin County, where we live, is the largest producer of maple syrup in Vermont. There are sugar houses everywhere! Some are big elaborate reverse osmosis and evaporator systems and others are tiny, little backyard operations. Communities get together to celebrate the season with pancake breakfast fundraisers at firehouses and maple ham dinners at churches and community halls. Maple popcorn, maple cotton candy, and maple candies pop up everywhere.
We invite others to join us in the fun by hosting an annual
Sugar Maker's Open House Weekend where sugar houses around the state open their doors to the public so that you can see and taste maple sap being boiled down into syrup, and then made into candies and other treats. Saint Albans is host to our annual
Vermont Maple Festival, quite an affair with everything maple, including maple tastings, maple recipe contests, maple syrup judging, live entertainment, the Annual Sap Run, a parade, the Fiddlers' Variety Show, crafts, and more.
Grey and I have a small sugarbush at the back of our property, and have sugared several years. Our operation is TINY, with just 30 taps, but that yields enough to keep us in syrup through the year with a few quarts to share with our family. We boil outside using a propane tank and burner, and then finish off the syrup inside. We aren't tapping the trees this year because we are just too busy opening the new shop, but the whole sugaring experience is truly one of my very favorite things. From walking through the snow to collect the sap into buckets, to smelling the fragrant steam as the excess water evaporates during boiling, to bottling the syrup into beautiful glass bottles, I love it all. One year we submitted a bottle of our syrup for judging at the Maple Festival, and I had butterflies as we anxiously awaited the results. We won a blue ribbon! I've never been prouder! :)
So what does a soap maker do when she can't make the real thing? She makes maple scented soap. It's warm and sweet and smells *almost* as good as the real thing. And it's certainly better for washing up.
Available now in our store and at Market.
Happy Sugaring!
