Happy Spring 2018!
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!
Maine Maple Weekend - March 24th & 25th!
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!
Exciting News... Sap Hound Expands!
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!
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!
Thanks to you, our friends, family, community...
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
