We might be biased (okay, we definitely are) but we’re also not alone in thinking that Hot Suppa is one that shouldn’t be missed, even if that means waking up early to grab a coveted seat. We’re not restaurant guides but we love working with them and imagining all the happy waffle-eating people that get a little taste of Maine maple at this southern-inspired spot, so we want to give them a proper introduction on our blog!
Open seven days a week for breakfast and lunch, Hot Suppa is the southern destination Mainers didn’t know they needed. Co-owned by brothers Alec and Moises, they serve American classics made from scratch in simple perfection. But how did this soul food eatery end up on the main drag of a coastal, northern city? Well, like many good stories it starts with an adventure!
In 2004, the Portland-native brothers set out on a culinary road trip. They focused their travels on the South where, “we loved the food and knew it was harder to find at that time in Maine,” Alec said. Without the help of the prolific online restaurant reviews of today, they had to do a lot of digging to find the best neighborhood restaurants/institutions to visit. “Most of the time it involved talking to locals about where their favorite spots were.”
In many ways, visiting these local establishments and understanding their role in the communities solidified the brothers’ desire to create a hub for their own friends and neighbors. “We make all our recipes from scratch and treat our guests as if we were serving our family.” That familial care, dare we say love, comes back to them too.
“Life unfolds inside these walls,” Alec explains. “Engagements—sometimes breakups—, family celebrations or catching up with a friend. Interacting with our team, vendors and guests is the most rewarding part of the restaurant.”
If you don’t mind immediately getting hungry, check out the full Hot Suppa menu here including some amazing brunch cocktails ranging from classics like Irish coffee and mimosas to Maine signatures like a rotating selection of alcoholic kombucha. But if you’re anything like us and making decisions when faced with such a glorious selection is a challenge, here are some crowd favorites Alec suggests.
“Our buttermilk waffle topped with whipped butter and Maine maple syrup is delicately thin, sweet, salty, and buttery… Fried green tomato eggs benedict, mother clucker, biscuits and gravy, fried chicken, corned beef hash, and oh, did I mention our waffle?”
… we’re drooling.
Alec also says if you’ve never indulged in a chicken and waffle drizzled with sweet maple syrup and dashed with your favorite hot sauce, it’s a must try. And if you’re feeling inspired to get in the kitchen, make sure to use chicken thighs for the juiciest most flavorful result.
While their travels brought them into warmer weather states, the brothers returned to their home state of Maine to launch their scratch made operation. “Maine is the package deal. Beaches in the summer, ski mountains in the winter and some of the best all-around food and beverage scenes in the country,” Alec said. “I feel lucky to be born and raised here.”
And like lots of other Mainers, the folks at Hot Suppa continue to honor and uplift their fellow local establishments, like us at Sap Hound and others. “We use local ingredients as often as we can. It's fresh, usually tastes better and keeps more dollars within our state economy,” Alec said.
Try their maple latte, for example, which uses our syrup for a creamy, lightly sweet way to start your day. Or grab a berry granola bowl made with organic granola from Grandy Oats in Hiram, Maine.
The more years that Hot Suppa is around, the more connections they build with local producers. “We have forged relationships with a great network of local producers and other vendors, and whether we're reaching out to a new vendor or the vendors find us, it usually happens organically through these relationships,” Alec said. Just another piece of being a neighborhood spot.
But running a business in Maine isn’t always easy. “We've always faced challenges over the years, and we've learned that challenges can help to highlight what needs to be adjusted or changed,” Alec responded. “It's how we get better.” He explained that the best approach to any new obstacle, for the restaurant industry or otherwise, is to keep a finger on the pulse of your community. “Staying focused as a team to give our guests the best experience we can offer is our north star.”
With that as their guiding principle, it’s no wonder they’ve been around in Portland for almost two decades and are one of the highest rated brunch spots in town. The best way to support them, and therefore the local producers they work with, is by giving them a visit.
As Alec said, “now in our 18th year, some things have changed, but we're still a neighborhood place, we hope a friend tells a friend not to miss.” Well, this is us telling all our friends and customers too, don’t miss Hot Suppa! And after you leave full and happy, we hope you’ll spot some strangers deliberating over the menu outside and tell them to head in.
]]>And if you ever get the chance to visit Old Village Bakery in North Conway, NH, it’s just this kind of place. Along with many other local producers, we’re proud to be a partner of this decades old staple of the North Conway community. With a small, hardworking team of bakers and retailers, they produce a stunning array of baked goods including breads, pastries, pizzas and more, five days a week. You can be sure that every time we stop by to drop off maple syrup, we walk away with some mouthwatering treats.
On our last visit, we took the time to get to know baker and manager, Margaret, a little better!
Old Village Bakery is a family owned and operated bakery that opened its doors to the Mount Washington Valley community in 2002. They pride themselves on fresh, handmade goodies for walk-ins, online orders, and wholesale customers. “We try to use the best ingredients we can, and we also support other local businesses and farms,” Margaret said.
Fans know to arrive early to snag the much-loved ham and Swiss croissants and many a local has made their Multigrain and English Toasting breads part of their weekly shopping essentials. “Our bread and baked goods are delicious, and we bake quite a wide variety of items” Margaret said, mentioning that their flavorful creations rotate throughout the seasons. Of course, you can also always grab a cup of Fair Trade, Organic coffee to accompany your baked goods.
And perhaps more important than the bread itself are the people who make and serve it. “We have a wicked good crew of employees, and in my opinion, we are a real community hub,” Margaret said. “Honestly, I’m not sure I can pinpoint exactly what makes us special. But clearly, I think so because I thought I would work there for a year and then go to grad school and that was 11 years ago! We really do seem to be a place where good people, customers, employees, and good food come together.”
Speaking of Margaret’s (somewhat spontaneous) 11 years at the bakery, she now has her hand in a little bit of everything behind the scenes. From weekly baking—can’t give that up!—to scheduling and ordering ingredients from suppliers like us, she has become a staple of the business just as much as it is a staple of the community.
“Every day when I go to work, I feel pleased to be there. Sure, there are some days when I’m dragging my feet, but I still love my job. I love baking delicious things and I love feeding people. I love to work at a place that brings people joy. I am always striving to be a better baker and hope that the fact that we care shines through in our products.” Well said, Margaret.
If you haven’t picked up on it yet, many of our partners are like-minded when it comes to connecting local businesses across New England, and Old Village Bakery is no exception. They’ve put a lot of thought and care into building a bread program that allows them to support local producers and introduce their customers to other businesses in the area.
“We connect with growers in our area for produce on our pizza, or eggs for our baking. Or maple syrup from you!” A few years ago, Margaret amended their daily muffin recipe to include a healthy dose of oats and needed something to make up for lost moisture. Enter maple syrup stage left. With a light sweetness that perfectly matched the existing recipe, maple became an essential to their muffins and we couldn’t be happier they chose us! Now, it also plays a role in specialty items like maple nut or maple ginger scones, maple pecan cookies, maple bread pudding, maple short bread, maple ginger granola, and oatmeal bowls—yum!
“We also bake a fair amount of breads and pastries for wholesale accounts so we have good relationships with several restaurants, inns, and an ice cream shop,” Margaret continued. Sometimes, she will even call up other bakeries in the area to get their advice or insight on the latest news. Together they navigate ingredient shortages, supply chain issues, and ingredient sourcing.
It can be had work, and often expensive to source ingredients locally but the benefit is in more than just the quality of the components. “It’s very difficult to run a small business and if we can all help each other out however we can, that makes a difference in the community,” Margaret explained. “It’s also just heightens our connection to the land. For instance, I love the seasonality of baking. When it’s apple season, there are so many wonderful fresh apples close to North Conway that it seems criminal not to use them.”
And the idea is to extend that connection to the customers that visit their storefront in search of sweet treats. “I love that we live in a community where I have gotten to know so many people through my job, and then I see them around town and develop relationships outside of the bakery,” Margaret said. As businesses support one another, they also turn to their customers for support.
With the cost of ingredients on the rise, Margaret says that one of their biggest struggles has been balancing the increase in price of their finished products. They’re doing their best to avoid risking the loss of loyal customers and are relying on the community to continue to supporting them.
The best way to do that? Pay a visit to Old Village Bakery or make them part of your weekend routine. If you’ve never had their goodies before, try one of Margaret’s favorites like the chocolate croissants—made daily—or their spicey double chocolate cayenne cookies. And if you don’t live nearby but are drooling after all this talk of pastries, we have a gift for you. Margaret shared Old Village Bakery’s chocolate chip recipe with us so that even those far away can get a taste of their goodness at home.
This recipe makes a large batch and yields about 20 half-cup servings. Granola can be stored in an airtight container once completely cooled for one to two weeks. If you would like a smaller or larger batch, you can use a digital recipe scaler to get the correct ingredient quantities.
Ingredients
1lb rolled oats
3.5 oz chopped crystallized ginger
1 teaspoon powdered ginger
1.5 teaspoons salt
2.5 oz sesame seeds
3.5 oz sunflower seeds
3.5 oz canola oil
6 oz maple syrup
Directions
Mix together the oats, both types of ginger, salt, sesame seeds and sunflower seeds. And oil and maple syrup and toss until evenly distributed. Spread on large sheet pans and bake at 325 for 40-50 minutes.
]]>We hear a lot of stories on our delivery routes and have made some incredible friends among our fellow Maine business owners. But why should we keep them all to ourselves? It’s part of our mission to promote the health of our land and our role as stewards of it, and what better way to do that than by supporting our partners who share those goals.
You already know we love to talk about sugaring, but it’s time we gave air-time to some of the many local producers who are loving and learning from the land around them. Starting with the folks at Maine Coast Sea Vegetables. That’s right, sea vegetables!
Maine Coast Sea Veg was founded in 1971 in a farmhouse kitchen, much like our cabin in the woods, where a couple discovered the rich flavor that wild harvested sea vegetables could lend to everyday foods. Back then, local seaweed harvesters were few and far between. Now, they process, pack, and ship several hundred thousand pounds of sea vegetables annually. But enough from our point of view!
Enter Kara Ibarguen, Kelp Krunch Baker and part of MCSV’s Outreach and Education team, who talked to us about exactly what makes them so special. She told us how proud she is that MCSV has been 100% employee owned since 2017, which means no single person, family, or party is a majority shareholder of the company’s stock.
She also says that the seaweed itself sets them apart.
“We are a unique business in that our seaweeds are all wild-harvest, not farmed for now at least.” Their sea vegetables are harvested from areas across the North Atlantic coast and are not only certified organic, but also tested for microbes, heavy metals, radioactivity, and other pollutants.
And while we could get truly nerdy about their harvesting and processing, what we really can’t stress enough are the amazing characteristics and benefits of seaweed.
“From helping meet the food needs of our growing population with high-level nutrition to helping sequester carbon and reducing ocean acidification,” sea vegetables are wholesome not only for human consumers but also for the land we live on, Kara said.
And that’s exactly what she loves most about working with sea vegetables. “My favorite part of my job is introducing people young and old to how truly delicious and nutritious seaweed is! I love seeing the reactions of people when we cook a simple dish like Dulse Grilled Cheese or Kelp Salad and they have a taste and they’re just amazed. I like to characterize what I do as demystifying sea vegetables; it’s my superpower!”
Like us, MCSV believes in the importance of place. In fact, they’re connected with many other local makers beyond us at Sap Hound. With the help of the Maine Seaweed Council, they’ve met and fostered relationships with seaweed industry members from around the state. These include harvesters, suppliers, and other companies making products that contain seaweed.
“We love our relationships,” Kara said. “Many of our suppliers are long time, multi-generational family relationships! This allows us to talk about what we sell with a sense of pride and deep understanding.”
MCSV has also hosted educational workshops that introduce local chefs to seaweed products and help them discover ways to incorporate this local ingredient into their cooking. By getting food industry professionals familiar with this unique food source, they are also spreading its goodness to all the restaurant-goers who will enjoy their new recipes.
Of course, they love the variety of wild sea vegetables just waiting to be found and added to your soup or salad. But their love of the state of Maine goes beyond their goals as a business. Kara was kind enough to share just a few other reasons why Maine holds a special place in her heart.
“By far what I enjoy most about living on the coast of Maine is all the great mountains for hiking with their rewarding views of the ocean, lakes, and other peaks,” she said. “I love to hike in all the seasons. The same trail never looks exactly the same twice.”
She couldn’t be more right. Our state is always changing and growing around us, and we love the new lessons and experiences it seems to always bring to our feet. Just this year, Sap Hound is making the move from Brownfield to our northern location. And though we’ll still be within the borders of Maine, we know that just a few miles can change the whole landscape and bring us a new perspective.
On top of the beauty, Kara also touches on the incredible people that always seem to draw her back to Maine. “I enjoy all the wonderful people who call this home. I’ve lived a lot of different places, but I’ve always returned to my first home,” she said.
We’re firm believers that maple syrup isn’t just for drenching your pancakes--though that’s definitely delicious—and likewise, seaweed isn’t just for things like sushi. As a baker for MCSV, Kara was able to give us some insight into how their brand combines these two Maine products.
“I mainly use the maple syrup in our Kelp Krunch Bars to give them a pleasing sweet flavor and to help them hold together.” P.S. Sesame Ginger is our personal favorite flavor and won a 2021 Good Food Award!
But the opportunities for collaboration don’t stop with Kelp Krunch! Kara says she incorporates maple syrup wherever a little sweetness is needed, like in the soy & sesame dressing for her seaweed salad or in her Irish Moss Pudding recipe!
Ingredients
Directions
You can get creative with your maple syrup and sea vegetable combinations, or you can always check MCSV’s amazing glossary of seaweed recipes for inspiration.
“I would just like to encourage all Mainers to take a new look at seaweed, not as an ocean ‘weed,’ but as a delicious, approachable, local food source. Don’t be intimidated by it and just give seaweed a chance!”
And seaweed isn’t just used in foods. We asked Kara if there were any fan-favorites from MCSV and she turned to one producer who, “makes a lovely line of botanical beauty products containing seaweed.” Other Maine companies use seaweed in products like beer, vodka and teas. The possibilities truly are as deep as the sea!
The story of Maine Coast Sea Vegetables and how we came to cross paths is a long one, but we’re just happy to introduce you to them and hopefully spark some curiosity about local Maine products like seaweed. Until next time!
]]>We are fortunate enough to live near a beautiful bog that we love to explore in every season. In the fall you can find wild cranberries there (see our pictures below). When I find food in the wild, it generates a similar feeling in me as when I grow my own food. It inspires me to put so much more care and attention into each dish I create.
I love recipes that are easy, healthy and delicious, and still contain a little something extra that makes them feel special. This recipe is all of those things. It includes so few ingredients, but they compliment each other so perfectly, a bit tart and and a bit sweet.
I hope this will become a fall favorite for your family!
Pottery by Karaku
Makes about 2 cups. Recipe can be halved.
Pour water then maple syrup right into the measuring cup together, making sure the total is 1.5 cups. This leaves a little less maple syrup to lick out of measuring cup.
Periodically scrape down the top edges of the sauce so it doesn't scorch around the edge.
When we consider organic certifications, we think about 3 major requirements: 1. What goes into your product (organic ingredients); 2. How you treat the land (manage for sustainability); 3. Your process (how you clean and manage any potential contaminants). In this article, we try to provide examples of what makes a maple syrup organic as it pertains to each of these requirements.
]]>It’s a reasonable question to ask. Maple syrup is an age old commodity; a single-ingredient product that is minimally processed.
While my answer to this question is, I admit, often a little more involved than most people bargain for, I think it’s worth laying out in the following way.
To be organic there are four important things to consider. Actually, there are three important things. The fourth thing is just a necessity for the certification process. They are the following:
Let's look at each of these for maple syrup.
For maple syrup this is easy. It is condensed maple sap.
Maple tree sap is boiled down to make maple syrup. This is what most people think of as the process of making maple syrup, but for a commercial operation like ours the process is a bit more complex. Besides using two evaporators, our operation also uses vacuum pumps, releasers, several reverse osmosis machines, preheaters, finish pans, filter presses and canners.
Running a reverse osmosis (RO) is an example of how most commercial operations have a more complex system for processing sap than the public often realizes. Here Nate stands next to the three posts in one of our RO systems.
In most commercial operations, there are two things that come into contact with our sap during and after the boiling process that have to be considered in terms of organic certification. These two things are a defoamer and a filter aid.
Let's look at the defoamer first. What is it?
Most every commercial maple syrup producer must add something during the boiling process so that their pans of hot maple sap do not boil over. That something is some kind of fat.
Why is it needed? Let's get out our chemistry goggles. When a liquid is at its boiling point, it boils. Whew, okay I guess we didn't really need the goggles. The not as obvious part of that statement means that the substance is changing from a liquid to gas throughout the entire column of the liquid (as opposed to evaporation, which just happens at the surface of a liquid, when that liquid is below its boiling point).
You can see the small bubbles in our front pan of boiling maple syrup. Ideally the level is low in the pan with as little foam as possible.
Because the bubbles created during the boiling process are roughly 95% gas and 5% liquid, they are less dense than the hot sap they are surrounded by and they rise to the top of that column of liquid. Now sometimes the energy of the molecules of gas are high enough that they break the bubble and the gas escapes. Sometimes this doesn't happen however, because they are very sticky. Okay we all know that syrup is sticky, but the molecules of condensing sap themselves are also sticky, electromagnetically speaking. This creates a high surface tension between the bubbles, so they want to stick together and create foam.
To break up some of the surface tension and reduce foam during a boil, some kind of fat is needed as a surfactant to break up the bubbles. We all know that oil and water do not mix well together, and in essence this is what reduces the foam.
Reducing foam is very important to the sugarmaker. It reduces the chance of sap boil over and burning pans. (Didn't you ever hear the joke about sugarmakers? There are two kinds. Those that have burned pans, and liars). Reducing foam also creates a more efficient boil by allowing for more rapid water loss. Excess foam can also create off-flavored syrup which reduces the syrup value.
There are all kinds of options for a defoamer out there. Back in the day when many sugarmakers were also dairy farmers, many farmers might have used cream or butter. Now there are more efficient synthetic defoamers. Currently these synthetic defoaming agents are not an approved organic processing aid. What do organic processors use? Well they use something that is already certified as organic. Organic canola and safflower oils are often the choice of organic maple producers. Organic cream or butter could be used, however we choose not to use them because because dairy is a common allergy and also to allow for vegans to eat our syrup.
So herein lies one of the simplest ways to differentiate an organic maple syrup from a conventional one, an organic maple syrup cannot be made with a synthetic defoamer.
An argument conventional maple syrup makers use against being certified organic is that they say that the organic oils are less efficient at doing their job. The maple industry is responding to this concern and the Proctor Maple Research Center at The University of Vermont is conducting research into potentially more efficient organic defoamers as well as guidelines for defoamer use (in addition to assessing tapping guidelines for sustainability).
On to the second processing aid that comes into contact with maple syrup, the filter aid.
If you've made maple syrup, you know that one of the most frustrating and difficult things about the process is filtering your syrup after it officially becomes syrup. That is because syrup is naturally thick and ooey gooey, and it makes for a sticky, slow process to try to push it through some paper or fabric. Heating it up helps. While there are a number of ways to filter, we at Sap Hound use a filter press.
The press is comprised of a series of stainless steel metal plates that line up together to form hollow compartments that the syrup gets pumped through. We line each plate with a piece of filter paper and then pump our syrup through the press. While pumping the syrup through we add filter aid which is a food grade (think:purified) diatomaceous earth (DE). For those who don't know DE is the fossilized remains of little tiny critters called diatoms that are crushed up into a fine powder. Then we recirculate the syrup-DE mixture through the press, and the DE gets caught between each filter paper and fills ups the little hollow spaces between each plate. The DE suspended between each plate creates the material that actually filters the syrup.
Any particles in the syrup, including perhaps* the oil we use as the defoamer, but most notably also the niter (also called sugar sand, it is the condensed minerals from the tree sap) gets removed in this way our syrup becomes clear.
All of the DE remains in the filter press once filtering is complete. Because it comes into contact with the finished maple syrup, it is essential that food grade DE is used. As it pertains to the subject of organic vs conventional maple syrup, all producers (whom use filter presses) use this, so it makes no difference between the two, except in one minor way. Organic producers are forced to provide documentation and receipts for all of their filter aid to show that it is what we say it is (food grade).
It is pertinent here to mention that there are several "tiers" if you will of organic.
Mentioning the filter aid is important because it is the contact between our maple syrup with the food grade DE that makes it so we cannot label our maple syrup as 100% Organic, even though none of it ends up in the final product.
The USDA is responsible for creating the national standards for organically-produced agricultural products. Let's look at what they say about being organic.
"The USDA organic regulations describe organic agriculture as the application of a set of cultural, biological, and mechanical practices that support the cycling of on-farm resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity. These include maintaining or enhancing soil and water quality, conserving wetlands, woodlands, and wildlife; and avoiding use of synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, irradiation, and genetic engineering." (see source here).
Thus, there is more to making organic maple syrup than just using an organic defoamer. We follow a set of guidelines set forth by a certifying agency that help keep the ecological integrity of the land.
In our case, we are certified by Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA). They provide us with tapping guidelines along with some general principles to farm by. Check out the list below for some examples of the guidelines for maple producers in 2020.
Organic standards also require that you remove spouts as soon as possible. Here you can see myself and Manny preparing for a day of spout removal.
The specific guidelines are largely related to tree health. Below is an example of a sugar maple tree that I removed the tap from in our forest. It has damage from a sugar maple borer insect. When I looked up at the crown of the tree, it was small indicating the tree was not in great health. The way this insect damages a tree is that it lays its eggs in sugar maple bark and when the larva hatches it crawls under the bark and overwinters. Then the next growing season, it tunnels in a spiraling fashion up the sap wood, the conductive tissue of the tree. This is a sugarmaker's most precious resource. The damage from the boring insect is enough to significantly reduce the amount of sap flow for the tree.
It is unlikely that this tree will die from this damage, but if it does, we will leave it for the animals. It will make a great foraging and habitat tree.
In the picture below you can see a tension puller on the line and what's called the drop, the small piece of tubing that goes from the main tubing system to the spout and tree (the loop of tubing that is hanging), being removed.
If it recovers enough we will be able to add it back into our production line up, but for now we let it try to heal itself.
In the case of maple sugaring this includes how you store your sap and syrup, how you clean your facility and it also extends to what could potentially contaminate your sap in the forest. Here are some examples from our practice manual are below:
We have gauges naturally on our vacuum pumps, but also at junctions with mainlines.
As an organic producer, we are subject to annual inspection by a third party inspector, and they go through this list with us, and usually more. This is a bit of insight into what they are looking for.
I wish we lived in a world where a natural food was sold as it is and if you wanted to add artificial ingredients, fillers, and chemicals you had to pay extra to certify that it is safe for consumption and label it with special logos.
Because we don't live in that world, the burden is on growers and producers like us to prove to organizations like MOFGA and our customers that we adhere to specific standards, mainly not putting certain things in or around our food. Thus, MOFGA requires documentation of our practices. A third party audit is often another difference between an organic and a conventional maple sugar farmer.
Buy direct from the farm and ask questions
Not all organic producers may be labeled as organic. Maybe a producer follows all of these organic practices but doesn't pay for the certification and audit, and is not officially labeled as such. Or you may buy syrup from a neighbor who cooks maple in the backyard using a small amount of cream as a defoamer, or even a cut of bacon! (Not the worst offense unless you happen to be vegan, vegetarian, or kosher, then it becomes an important detail). The only way you would know either of these things would be to ask the person who made the maple syrup how they made it.
Before we were a commercial operation we lugged buckets of sap to the fire where we boiled our maple syrup down. We made syrup with many organic practices, although knowing much more now than we did then, we did some things conventionally. Things as simple as storing sap in a plastic drum is not acceptable for an organic operation. It is true for many (but not all) hobby sugarmakers, that they may use many organic practices. However, the only way to know for sure is to ask.
Certifications are one way to communicate things about the food we buy. For us, we have found organic certification to be an important way to let our customers know about the standards we use to produce our maple syrup.
In my opinion, the best thing you can do when buying maple syrup is to shop directly from a farmer and ask them about their maple syrup. I've never met a sugar maker who doesn't like to chat. So don't be shy. We work hard and like to talk about what we do.
Nate, Corrie, and Manny (eating his crunchies) after a long open house event.
In the end, if you can get your information right from the source about how we make our maple syrup, you'll have a better understanding of your food, as well as the thought and dedication we put into our work. Hopefully this allows you to make more informed decisions about your food choices and have a stronger connection to your food.
]]>Here are two healthy ways to spruce up your spring salads with our delicious organic maple syrup.
Most salad dressing from the store comes with all sorts of fillers and unhealthy sweeteners. Also store-bought dressings can be expensive! I make my own at home using evoo, vinegar, and a little bit of our maple syrup. That way I'm getting the great flavor of maple, along with a little sweetness, and the extra vitamins and minerals that natural maple syrup has which other sweeteners, even organic cane sugar and honey do not.
Here's the recipe for a new dressing I made this spring:
You can simply throw it all together, but here is a hint that I learned while making this. Mix the wasabi with the 1 tsp of maple syrup in a small jar first. Cover the jar for 5 min to let the flavor develop. Then add in your salt and pepper to the wasabi mixture. Next add your vinegar to the mixture and use that to swish around the thick wasabi paste so that it can be poured and doesn't stay stuck to the bottom of your bottle! Then add the rest of the ingredients.
This is an easy way to make any average salad, an amazing salad!
]]>
As I'm sitting down the write this we've just gotten about 2 feet of snow, so I guess that's spring in Maine!
We have had an eventful year already at Sap Hound Maple Company and I wanted to share some news with you about our upcoming open house, our plans for expansion, as well as our new maple CSA!
We will be opening our doors for our annual open house and sugarhouse tours for the last weekend in March! We always look forward to this event, as it's a chance to share our process with our neighbors, friends, and family. We hope that you can make it!
We will open the doors to the sugarhouse between 9 AM and 4 PM to give tours and offer a sampling of delicious baked goods (donuts, scones etc), maple baked beans and hot dogs cooked in sap! We will also be offering maple soda on tap, along with a sampling of other goodies to try. Of course we will have our maple cotton candy machine a humming for that once or twice a year special treat!
Below is a picture I love, of the Dads, at the last open house!
As usual we don't let much time pass before dreaming up some more ideas, usually involving maple. Three months ago, we took a big jump and purchased Mountain Maple, a maple sugaring operation near Upton/Andover, Maine. It's a beautiful location up in the Grafton Notch area, with some of the largest snowfalls in the state! This is a picture of us below on our first visit to the Mountain Maple Sugarhouse!
We are excited about this opportunity to expand the number of trees we are tapping and since January have already more than doubled our number of taps for the 2018 season! So far Nate has been spearheading the Sap Hound "north" expansion to get that operation off the ground and running for the season (see the picture of him below putting in drop lines up north), while I have been running Sap Hound "south" in Brownfield.
There's a lot of work to be done on this new land, and we expect to work year round at making this into an efficient and sustainable maple sugaring operation! Below you can see Manny peaking around a sugar maple tree. We'll be pulling out the old lines you can see near him this summer.
In addition to this larger expansion, we have expanded our number of taps in Brownfield as well! We are boiling sap from the Potters Farm in Brownfield, where our friend Derek Potter is starting up a small but nice system of tubing. You can see him in the picture below, sitting next to his full tank of sap! We have also extended our own system of tubing onto our neighbors' property. Christie & Richie Girouard are our neighbors that helped to bring our tap count up to 1900 taps for the year on the Brownfield/Conway border! We feel blessed to have such kind neighbors who are so excited about maple sugaring!
What do all of these new taps mean? Well, hopefully, more maple! We are also working hard on finding new ways to share our maple with all of you good folk. That's why I'm excited about announcing our new Maple CSA!
2018 will be our first year of our maple CSA! In an effort to make our maple syrup more available to our local community we are starting a CSA in which you can pick up maple syrup 4 times a year at our sugarhouse and a few other locations.
This will work similarly to any other CSA, except that it is more spaced out according to the speed at which many people use maple syrup. We have seen a big increase in people telling us that they use maple syrup for all of their cooking, as they would rather use a healthier, less processed and local product than refined white sugar or corn syrup! We hope that this CSA will help suit the needs for this change in cooking habits of many of our customers. We also hope it will let you know the days and times that you can visit the sugarhouse to pick up maple syrup for your own kitchen or for gifts for others.
The CSA will start at our open house, where you can sign up and take home your first bottle of maple syrup. After that, there will be a pick-up date in June, September, and December (you can find the schedule here). If you provide us with your email, we can send you a reminder of when the pick-up dates and times are. It's pretty simple!
If you want to find out more about the CSA, you can read about it and sign-up online or you can also sign up at our Open House weekend!
In our third year of operation, Nate and I have really been moved about how many people make the time in their lives to help support a small company such as ours. We continue to grow and learn constantly, and always listen to what our neighbors and customers have to say. We really value being a part of this community, and continue to enjoy meeting more and more of you, as you give us calls or emails and pop by the sugarhouse. We especially love seeing everyone each spring, as we come out of the nooks and crannies of our cozy homes after a long winter of hibernation! We sincerely thank all of you for your support along this journey that we have embarked upon.
We hope that this email finds you well and that you are finding the space and time in your life to enjoy your friends, family, pets, and the places you love.
We hope to see you soon,
Corrie, Nate and Manny
]]>If you're anything like me (writing a blog about Thanksgiving on the 4th Wednesday night of November!) you might need some last minute recipes for the big day tomorrow...
You absolutely have to have a good tasting bird on Thanksgiving. Last year was my first year making my own big holiday bird for our family, and I was intimidated - memories of Chevy Chase sitting at the table and the burst of a desiccated turkey being cut open haunted me! But I was happy to find out making the turkey wasn't nearly as hard or scary as I had thought it would be, and even more happy to discover how a-maze-ing a maple-glazed turkey tastes!
As if pumpkin pie wasn't good enough on it's own, why not throw in a little maple and whiskey...? I love how the author of this recipe equates the flavor of whiskey with a “cuddling up next to the fire experience in liquid form." Why wouldn't that be delicious in a pie?
Okay, well it has to be Maple Buttah if you're in Maine. But whether it's Martha's recipe (the one below) or your own, I have not met anyone alive who doesn't love this simple 3-ingredient part of the Thanksgiving meal. I'll warn you now however, if you make it once, you'll have to make it every year!
No matter how you celebrate this Thursday, we hope that you are surrounded by the smells of delicious food, the sounds of friends and family laughing, and enough space and silence to feel grateful for all that is good in your lives.
Warmly,
Corrie & Nate
We are so grateful for all of you! If you would like to buy some maple for a holiday gift, this year, we are offering a special Black Friday/SmallBusiness Saturday/Cyber Monday (is that all of them??) deal of a *free* mini maple syrup jug stocking stuffer (see picture below) with each $12 spent on maple purchases! Just use the coupon code freemaplestuffers2017 when you check out between November 24-27th.
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Here's the ingredients I started with, except one important one I forgot (oops! I will let you see if you can figure out which one it is).
Ingredients for maple balsamic reduction:
Ingredients for crostini:
Directions for the Maple Balsamic Reduction:
Directions for the crostini:
Maple Sugaring or just "sugaring" - is the process of collecting the sap (water with sugar and minerals dissolved in it) from the maple trees and boiling it down (concentrating the sugar) to make it into a sweet delicious syrup.
Sugarbush - the forest (stand, grove etc.) of maple trees where the sap is harvested.
Manny out on patrol in the sugarbush. He's taking a rest because the snow is deep and hard going!
Sugarmaker - the poor saps who makes maple syrup! (see below).
I imagine sugar makers would also made good gold miners. It takes one part dreaming, three parts elbow-grease, and a dash of gestalt.
Sugar shack, sugar house or sap house - the building which houses the evaporator and is where syrup gets made! On the smaller scale, these buildings are often unheated and seasonally used by the farmer. I think the tradition is to use them until they fall down. Hence the name, sugar shack.
The Sap Hound Maple Sugar House! We built this last year (fall of 2015), using Eastern Hemlock timbers that grew right here on our land. Notice Manny, the Sap Hound on patrol on top of the mound of snow to the left of the sugar house.
Run - A run is what happens when the weather conditions are just right for collecting sap. You’ll hear people say “the sap’s running.” Side story: I got in a funny conversation with two old-timers at a gas station one early morning in January. We were all surprised about the early run. A-yut, it’s early this year... Funnily enough it wasn’t until halfway through our conversation I realized they were talking about the smelt run not the sap. I guess the Atlantic smelt perhaps? I'll let Nate's family of fishermen comment on that one... Turns out they had plenty of opinion about the early sap runs too. Okay seriously, this story should have started with, “You know you live in Maine when…”
Here you can see a tap in the maple tree and the tubing which the sap would run down a system of tubing all of the way to the sugar house.
The term run, as applied to sap, comes from an old misunderstanding where people thought that the sap was stored in the roots of a tree overwinter, and when the spring thaw came, the sap would travel up the tree in warm days and back down to the roots in cold nights, thus making the sap “run” up and down the tree. Now scientists describe the process which makes it possible to collect sap more like this: the tree actually freezes solid with the sap in it through the winter. With the cold temperatures the gases trapped inside the tree (i.e. carbon dioxide) gets compressed. With the warm days during the spring the tree warms and the gas expands, creating a positive pressure inside the tree. That positive pressure pushes the sap out (or makes it “run”) to the buds of the tree, as well as out any injury (think broken branch, squirrel chew) or a tap hole.
Some tubing with sap in it!
Sap - It’s always good to be clear about what Sap really is. Sap is the water inside a tree with lots of goodies like dissolved vitamins and minerals and sugar in it. All trees make sap, but not all are great for tasting, collecting and turning into syrup. Sap or maple sap, which is specifically from a maple tree, is just slightly sugary, often only 1-2% sugar, and at times when the sugarmaker is in luck up to 3%. It doesn’t seem like much, but in the tree world, it’s friggin' awesome.
This is a refractometer, the tool we use to measure the sugar content of the sap. You place a couple drops of sap on the lens (the blue part) and then look through an eyepiece. The tool measures the angle in which the light is refracted through the liquid, the more concentrated the sap, the larger the angle of refraction.
This is what you see when you look through the refractometer. If you look closely you can see that this reading shows roughly 2% of the sap is sugar.
Another thing that makes the sap from maple trees particularly good is its unique maple taste, as well as the fact that sugar maples are long-lived, late successional species (think, they live long enough and get big enough that we can collect some sap from them without impacting their overall health). But enough about my love affair with maple trees... Sap is clear and water-like, so it's not like the thick sticky sweet stuff is just hanging out under the bark (although there are some interesting Abenaki legends that describe a time when it was so). And sap is so refreshing to taste! If you’ve never tried raw sap you'll have to put it on your (sap) bucket list.
Maple Syrup - The sap when concentrated to over 66% sugar is now called syrup. When we started turning our hobby maple operation into an actual business I had to remember to put the word maple in front of syrup. I guess when you grow up in Vermont you kind of assume there is no other kind.
These are some of my favorite bottles that we sell our organic maple syrup in. They are beautiful bottles made in Italy and we dip them in red wax for that extra special touch.
Tap or spile - The spile is the spout that gets driven into the tree, now more commonly referred to as the tap. People often ask if it hurts the tree. Being a fellow tree hugger, I understand the empathy. In our sugarbush the diameter of the spile is less than 5/16 of an inch and it is driven into the tree 1 inch deep. The impact is kept to a minimum for the health of the tree and there are best practices defined as to how many taps can go into a tree of a particular size. You cannot tap a tree under 10 inches in diameter and this means on average a tree is about 40 years old before it is tapped. I guess the short answer is, if it’s done right, no putting in a tap doesn’t hurt the tree. People who don’t make maple syrup often ask how many trees you have. Sugarmakers ask how many taps.
Here is an up-close shot of a maple tree with a tap hole that has healed over.
I have to go off on a tangent here about the word spile itself, because it was love at first sight for me. You know how there are those words that you get attached to when you first hear them, they are just pleasant on the tongue or ear or both. Like marscenent. Or ottantotto (the number 88 in Italian). Anyway I quickly looked up the etymology of spile online, since I love it so much I figured maybe I should share something about it. Without checking the accuracy of any of these claims, it sounds like the word is perhaps German in origin, related to the words such as skewer, splinter or wooden peg. Since they used to make maple sugaring spiles out of wood, such as staghorn sumac (it’s pithy and easy to hollow out) and others, this makes sense to me, but if there’s anyone out there who knows better, I’d love to hear what you know. I guess on the other hand, sometimes the love in the mystery...
This is a modern tap or spile. It is hammered into the tree and directly connected to some tubing called a "drop line" which is just a small section of tubing that runs between the tree and another section of tubing.
A Boil - This is just what is sounds like. Boiling the sap down into syrup! Sugarmakers often judge the goodness of their season on the number of boils (hence the batches of syrup made).
It is usual to save a vial from each batch of maple syrup made, to help with grading purposes. You can see how each batch can be slightly different in color.
Evaporator - This is the large pan or set of pans used to boil the sap. When we were a hobby sugarmakers we used just a square flat stainless steel pan on top of a barrel on a fire pit. Now our evaporator is 3x10 feet long, is comprised of 2 pans (usually there is a “front” and a “back” pan that are connected by piping).
The evaporator, housed inside our sugar house! There are many components, including a steam hood, preheater for the sap, float boxes that help keep the level of sap in the pan consistent, two pans on top of a long firebox called the arch.
The bottom of the back pan is not flat but has a series of “fins” which allows for more surface area for the heat of the fire to reach the sap. Our front pan has a little flu-like system that allows for the syrup to travel through by density. This allows us to draw off syrup when it reaches the right temperature continuously throughout a boil, rather than have a whole pan turn to syrup at once.
This is our front pan with boiling maple syrup in it. The pan is separated so that it flows by density toward the spout where we draw off pure maple syrup at generally a temperature of 219 degrees F.
Arch - The actual firebox below the pans is called the arch. It is the part of the evaporator that acts like Audrey from Little Shop of Horrors. “Feed me Seymour!” It has an insatiable need to be fed firewood.
This is a picture of my dad loading the arch (firebox) with firewood.
Maple Cream - This is maple syrup that has been boiled down further and is then chilled and stirred (imagine whipped maple syrup). There is no dairy in the maple cream we at Sap Hound make. Now, maple butter on the other hand is sometimes exactly the same thing as I just described, or sometimes as the name implies, it is butter with maple in it. If you’re confused, just ask the chef for details!
Organic Maple Cream stacked on the kitchen table. I think of it as whipped maple syrup.
Maple Candy - This is maple syrup that has been boiled down even further than cream, also stirred then poured into molds. Hard maple candy has been boiled longer than the soft maple candy which melts in your mouth. I would say soft maple candy is more prevalent around here, but not entirely sure if that’s accurate. They’re both fantastic.
This is the soft maple sugar candy that is being poured into molds.
Maple Sugar - This is maple syrup that has been boiled down even further than candy! It is like granulated white sugar but obviously much better. It is also stirred until it crystallizes, and is cool because it gives off a burst of heat of crystallization in the process (think high school chemistry, wear your goggles and don’t lean over the lab bench!). This is it folks, this was the traditional way to store maple before refrigeration, as a dry sugar, not syrup. Makes sense right?
Sugar on snow - boil the good stuff a bit, pour it on some snow, just make sure it’s not yellow (how can you not mention it).
Jack Wax - This is that lovely maple taffy more traditionally shared in Quebec where boiled down syrup is poured in a line down some snow and you roll it up on a popsicle stick. Delicious!
Grade(s) - There are now four grades that are internationally recognized as the standards for maple syrup. We get asked about grades a lot, so if you want to know more please refer to our about maple syrup page. Generally speaking, every batch of maple syrup is unique. We use a system of grading for both the color and taste of maple syrup to try to help consumers understand what they are getting in the jug.
A grading kit is used to help determine the grade of a batch of maple syrup. A sample from each batch is put into a grading vial and then compared to the standard colors in a grading kit.
The darker syrups, often made later in the season have a more robust maple flavor. They are described as more earthy, although I feel this doesn’t quite capture it. Tasting the dark syrups are like taking a trip through your childhood, with a substantial taste of the sweetness of timelessness and rich organic matter found in the woods. Elitists love the delicate grades of maple syrup (the lightest) and who can blame them. They are usually made earlier in the season, and are boiled for the least amount of time (thus less of the maillard browning reaction happens, resulting in a less brown color). The taste itself is actually more delicate in terms of the maple flavor, think less full-bodied if we were drinking wine.
Okay folks. That’s all I have in me for definitions (if you can call them that!). Let me know if you have any that you think I should add to the list!
Breathe deep, laugh loud, and love what you do.
Corrie
Sap Hound Maple's Sugarhouse with Pleasant Mountain the background.
]]>Did you know that Quebec produces 70% of the global supply of maple syrup? Did you know that all that maple syrup is controlled by a cartel known as the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, backed by Canadian Law? Similar to how OPEC controls oil production and prices in the Middle East, the Federation sets mandatory quotas and requires farmers to sell syrup through designated agents or through the federation itself. It is actually illegal for individual producers to sell syrup on the free market. The logic is that the federation protects farmers from the unpredictability of weather, keeping prices high and stable. To keep prices high the federation enforces strict quotas for the province’s 7,400 producers. Instead of flooding the market during years with bumper crops, all syrup produced beyond that amount is stored in the federation’s warehouse, which helps prop up prices by limiting supply. When seasons are less productive, the federation releases the syrup to maintain stable supply. The syrup is stored in 600-pound barrels and either shipped to buyers around the world or stored in warehouses.
However, centralized control of maple syrup worth hundreds of millions of dollars can cause problems and not all suppliers are happy with how the federation makes and enforces quotas. If a producer makes 45 barrels one year and the next year is really good and they make 60, they want to get paid for the 60. But once the farmer has filled the quota, the surplus, no matter how large, is retained until they sell it, which can be years. There is a small percentage of Canadian maple syrup farmers who are actively against the cartel and they have the odds stacked against them. The federation can seize equipment and levy fines for producers who sell on the open market and they win most court cases suing farmers for not complying with the rules. Truly the kingpins of maple syrup, federation maintains some control of producers outside of Canada as well. Producers in the United States and Europe have to compete with Quebec so they are forced to set prices in accordance with the federation. If you want to compete in the maple syrup market your prices have to be competitive so you may be forced to sell at a price below what the market would truly bear. This may keep profits artificially low for many maple farmers.
Originally, the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers was meant to represent and advocate for producers but when maple syrup supply began to outgrow demand in the early 2000s and farmers became acutely at the mercy of gyrating market conditions, the federation began directly negotiating prices with buyers. This is when the strategic maple reserve came into existence and the federation began storing surplus syrup in warehouses and the federation’s focus switched from advocacy to supply management. There is a lot of debate about the economics of a supply controlled industry. Typically, higher prices attract new producers and/or new techniques but quotas are a major barrier to new entrants and a deterrent to innovation because a producer can’t snag a larger market share. Basically, cartels work well to address an underlying market failure - like over farming or depletion of natural resources - but the benefits of supply management are typically greater for larger producers than for smaller ones.
Economic conditions such as these are the perfect backdrop for subterfuge, demonstrated by the 2012 maple syrup heist where dessert bandits took off with $18M worth, or 10,000 barrels of Quebec maple syrup. The warehouse was lightly guarded and the thieves took up shop nearby and over the course of a year removed the syrup and sold it on the open market in other Canadian provinces and the United States. Three suspects were arrested and charged with theft, conspiracy, fraud, and trafficking in stolen goods and police have recovered only two-thirds of the stolen syrup. The heist drew a lot of attention to the maple syrup cartel and highlighted the friction between supply management and free markets. The federation isn’t likely to lose its hold over production, however, and Canada will continue to dominate the global syrup market for the unforeseeable future. But the heist will not be forgotten. A film about the theft will be coming out in 2017 starring Jason Segal, directed by Seth Gordon.
Christopher Sullivan is a business analyst and financial consultant from Boston, a proud father of a Pug named Olive and a cat named Kevin, and a voracious consumer of Sap Hound maple syrup.
To learn more about the cartel, the heist, and the economics of maple syrup supply management, see these links bellow:
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/12/maple-syrup-heist
http://northernwoodlands.org/articles/article/maple-bubble
http://america.aljazeera.com/multimedia/2015/4/canada-syrup-cartel.html
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2013/06/deslauriers.htm
To see an illustrated account of the heist by Modern Farmer magazine, click here:
http://modernfarmer.com/2014/01/illustrated-account-great-maple-syrup-heist/
Now let's be honest, usually conferences are not that exciting. But one where you can see a robot milk a cow or eat maple candy cooled inside of a vacuum can't be that bad can it?
Actually the type of information sharing that happens at a conference like this can make a huge difference to a sugarmaker. It is far from typical to be able to go to a school or get trained to do what we do. At this conference we can not only learn from researchers and experts on the latest technology and best practices for producing maple syrup, but we also get tons of anecdotal evidence and ideas from talking with other sugarmakers as for what might work best in our own maple operation.
The first day we spent attending seminars on everything from marketing maple syrup to managing your sugarbush, from tubing research, to making maple candy. Looks like a regular conference, right?
Two talks I found particularly interesting were on the potential impacts of climate change on the maple sugaring industry and I am putting together a more comprehensive post on that... but to give you a hint of what's the come, an analysis of records going back to the 1800s show that the maple sugaring season is decreasing on average just over 1 day per decade, which might not seem like much to the average person unless you know that the season only lasts 30 days on average!
Well, it wasn't big and yellow, but the second day we hopped aboard a bus tour. We toured northern Vermont primarily Chittenden and Franklin counties. According to NASS (our National Agricultural Statistics Service that reports on pure maple syrup production) there are around 13 different states in the USA that make maple syrup. In the 2016 season, Vermont made 47.3% of the pure maple syrup produced in the United States, even though its total land area comprises roughly only 1.7 % of the maple syrup producing region. As we travelled around the area, we were mesmerized by the number of large operations within only few miles of each other. And when I say large, I mean 10,000 to 60,000+ taps.
One of the things that makes this industry so interesting is that every operation is unique. The lay of the land, the microclimate, the soil depth and nutrient content, the distribution and species of trees, the methods for sap collection, transport and storage, the size and type of evaporator, what is used for fuel, filtration, bottling, storage, and the list goes on and on. By the nature of the biz sugarmakers must be inventive and industrial to make their situation work, so it's cool to see how different producers McGyver their own process to their own unique situation to make the highest quality maple syrup possible.
Here for instance, is the Davis Family Maple Sugarhouse in Underhill, VT. They run off of solar electricity, and operate a their evaporator off of biomass chips.
A view of the solar array of 78 panels on the sugar house roof.
Below you can see the biomass feeder - small wood chips are feed out of the auger up a conveyer belt into the sugarhouse where they are automatically fed into the evaporator.
Here is a nice display the Davis family put together with information on boiling with woodchips.
Another stop was to the Proctor Maple Research Center where Mark Isselhardt and Abby van den Berg gave us a tour of the research facility.
Visiting this research facility gives you an idea of how dynamic this industry really is. There is constantly new technology and theories to test. Check out these dueling evaporators that allow these scientists to replicate conditions for experimental maple syrup batches.
For example, a recent study they have been working on is to see how the flavor and chemical composition of pure maple syrup changes when the sap has been concentrated to a higher concentration using a reverse osmosis machine (this is the process of increasing sugar concentrations in sap by forcing it through membranes at high pressure to remove water. You can read more about it on our website here).
Using these evaporators the scientists can take sap from the same run, concentrate it to different densities, and boil it down in as near as possible to identical conditions in these evaporators side by side to be able to compare characteristics of the resulting pure maple syrup.
I come from a forest research background, and a big part of my master's thesis involved quantifying the amount of variability that is often not accounted for in large scale ecological studies. So I really appreciated seeing these evaporators lined up side by side to allow scientists to be able to keep a number of factors in their study constant while changing only the variables they wish to investigate.
Here Mark shows us a map of the experimental sugarbush and where the research lab was on the map.
Below is an image of White Birch tree cookies cut in half (a tree cookie is a horizontal slice of tree, where you can see the growth rings of the tree, each ring representing one year of growth). These tree cookies are being used to quantify the scarring from tapping using photographic images. You can see from the cookie on the left what happens when a tree is tapped too young, the resulting scar can become enlarged giving you more nonconductive wood tissue (meaning the sap cannot move through it).
Below is a photograph of how the lab looked in 1947 when it was established as Proctor Farm, the first permanent maple research facility in the world.
The Marsh family in Jeffersonville has been sugaring since 1909, but they are far from being stuck in their ways. This operation of over 10,000 taps is run by a family that is not afraid of pioneering new technology to increase the efficiency of their operation. They gave us a brief overview of the monitoring system they use to detect air leaks, frozen ball bearings, and anything else that can send a tubing system awry in the woods. Each of the mainlines has a sensor installed at the end of it that gives them real-time data on the temperature, inches of vacuum on that line and more. The monitor below shows the map of their sugarbush with data points for each mainline.
The rest of the sugarhouse is also set up for an efficient high-yield operation. Check out this beaut, a brand-new 15 foot long oil-fired evaporator that has a high pressure pan cleaner that sprays down the evaporator pans after each boil.
Another high-tech farm we visited, Sweets Farm, also makes maple syrup, but the maple wasn't the high point of the visit. Joan and Kelly, really nice down to earth people showed us their robotic milking operation. The Sweets have a herd of 225 milking cows, both Jerseys and Holsteins. They have a robotic milking system which allows cows to get up and get in line for a milking whenever they feel they need it. They also have a robotic calf feeder and feed pusher that goes around and pushes the feed in the barn below closer to the cows.
The whole operation was pretty impressive, and despite the automatization, the amount of work that these farmers do is impressive.
p.s. they have 20,000 maple taps too!
60,000+ taps. That is how many taps the Branon Family will be managing this year, with expansion on the horizon. This family run sugaring operation had characteristics of many of the farms we visited in northern Vermont. They operate with solar power, generating enough energy from their solar trackers to run their sugarhouse, workshop, house and pump houses in their Fairfield location (they have two locations, the other being in Bakersfield, VT). The scale of the operation reflects the amount of work the family must put in, and much of the family works year-round at it. Check out the CDL and Lapierre evaporators that they run side by side during the sugaring season.
Below you see the room between the sap storage and boiling room, it is filled with posts for reverse osmosis (for concentrating raw saw before it's boiled).
Because the sugaring season is short and sap must be kept cool and boiled quickly once it is collected, an operation this size must take advantage of different technologies to make the logistics handling large amounts of sap manageable. This family has done everything from pumping cool brook water inside to cool their sap, to piping their hot condensate water throughout the sugarhouse so they can clean anything on demand.
Timing is also important in sugaring, and the bigger you get, the more important timing is. Each farmer has only a limited amount of space for sap storage and has a specific rate that they can boil, filter, and bottle their maple syrup. Orchestrating the whole process can be quite delicate, and during the season it becomes almost like a dance of many different hoses, pumps, filters, tanks and people running around simultaneously. Each step has special requirements that must be met, and one often depends upon the last or next to come. To help with this orchestration, the Branons have installed a security system that allows them to view video in all different parts of their operation at both locations so that they can make sure that all pieces of the operation are running smoothly and that they can anticipate any problems that might arise.
It's a tradition for sugar houses to put a sample of each batch they make in the window. Below is the Branon Family's collection, and this is only one of two windows that were full.
All in all the event truly was a celebration of REAL maple, as its slogan declared. Sugarmakers are friendly people and so many are willing to share their expertise and experiences to make the industry as a whole better. Amongst all of the tech sessions, research, and conversations about methods and different farms there was one commonality that linked everything together. It appears to me that by far, most sugaring is done by families. This is perhaps the result of its farming roots. Sometimes an operation is only run by two people, such as a father and his son or a sister and her brother. And sometimes you'll find a sugarhouse filled with extended family, perhaps even 3 generations, including those so young they can barely talk or those so old they can barely walk, working side by side to make the operation successful. It was lovely to leave this event thinking about this. Getting to know each farm and its operation is also getting to know a family and catching a glimpse into their life. And while advances in technology may change how we make maple syrup, it is comforting to think that there are some things that don't change as much as we think.
Want to know why we named our blog the Kettle Tender? Read our first blog entry here.
]]>The Kettle Tender: Boiling Down the Name.
The name for this blog comes from a series of 19th century oil paintings depicting “Sugaring Off” parties in Fryeburg, Maine. Painted by artist Eastman Johnson, these scenes portrayed a spirited community coming together to celebrate the first boil of the maple sugaring season.
While “sugaring off” is a term rarely used anymore, the tradition of gathering around a pot of boiling maple sap continues today. We love how sugaring brings together our friends, neighbors, and family, to celebrate the season and the art of boiling down syrup.
In Johnson’s paintings, the person in charge of the boiling process was referred to as the kettle tender. The reflectiveness of this figure in the paintings says many things about how and why we sugar. Sugaring, like all aspects of farming, is a way of life. It is demanding, but it is also freedom. It provides us the opportunity to support ourselves in a self-reliant way, creating a fair living with our own hands.
Once people visit our sugar house and see how much work is involved in making maple syrup many people ask us why do we do it. Well here is my answer. We identify with the kettle tender. We love living closely with nature and are willing to work hard to make a living from what it provides. We approach our work with intention and determination and it gives us peace and purpose. We are proud that we are a resource to our family, friends, and neighbors and are a part of strengthening our community.
We make maple syrup on the cusp of seasons, when winter is waning, but still grips the night with freezing temperatures. Each day, the sun rises a little earlier, and we celebrate the promise of the coming spring and the warmth that it will provide. While methods and techniques have changed greatly over many years, this New England tradition of spending long days out in the woods and long nights in the sugar house boiling down maple syrup is age-old. Fewer things have felt more natural to us. And sometimes, when the crowds are gone, and it's a still cold clear night, when the stars shine like lasers cutting down to earth, I feel the warm heat of the fire we build, smell the sweet scents of the boiling sap we collect, and know that somehow we are making more than pure maple syrup.
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