Winter may seem like a slow season, with almost all plant-life dead (or appearing so), or buried under feet of snow. There is certainly a degree of hibernation and hunkering down that occurs during this time, but there is still work to be done. Pipelines must be checked for damage--on snowshoes this time of year. At this time of year, day-time temperatures may be around 10 degrees Fahrenheit, a brisk temperature for outdoor work. Weekly batches of pancakes and waffles become the norm.
By mid-February, hopefully the temperatures have risen a little, because this is when tapping begins. "Tapping the trees" involves more tramping on snowshoes in the woods, this time with a tool-laden belt, a drill, and a backpack with plenty of snacks and layers. A small drill bit bores a hole in Sugar and Red Maple trees, a spout is inserted, and thus the tree's bountiful sap can be partially captured for syrup. The spout is connected to sap pipelines, which take the sap directly to the sugarhouse.
Sugaring
As sugaring season sets it, you can say goodbye to bedtimes, day jobs, and any notion of a standard meal hour. The sap is flowing, and must be boiled down to syrup; the sooner the better for the highest quality product. The sap doesn't flow every day however; only when the air temperature drops below freezing at night, and rises above freezing during the day.
The sap to syrup transformation is simple yet time-consuming: it takes about 40 gallons of sap to yield one gallon of syrup. All you have to do is boil it down, to a mere fraction of what it was. When it is finally ready, it is drawn off in small quantities, and then stored in a 40-gallon steel drum until it is canned for selling. The syrup must also be categorized by grade: fancy, medium amber, dark amber, or B. Generally, a sugarbush will make lighter syrup at the beginning of the season, darker toward the end. The amount of each grade that is made depends on the trees, the temperatures, wind and other weather; there are no guarantees.
Spring
With temperatures above freezing at night, and daytime temperatures in the 50s and 60s, the sap stops running and the official sugaring season is over. The buds on the trees are coming soon, the smells of fresh plant growth fill the air. And while the sugaring season is technically over, the clean-up process has yet to begin. Everything must be washed!
In addition to sugaring-related tasks, the driveway must be grated, the lawn mowed, garden beds turned over, and seedlings started in the greenhouse. Everything is turning green; new life is all around us.
Summer
Summer is the off-season when it comes to our sugaring operation. During these warm months, we may meet with a forester to confirm the health and growth of the maple trees and the forest eco-system as a whole. Insect damage can be devastating to a sugarbush, but thankfully we've had no insect problems in ours. A forester can also determine when a thinning should be done, to promote overall forest health.
We make deliveries to co-ops, farm stands, general stores, and ship retail orders. To keep up with the demand, the syrup is moved from the steel barrels it is stored in, heated, and canned into smaller containers, ranging in size from 100ml to one gallon. We rely on our customers to support our family business, and will always do our best to meet the needs of these customers.
Fall
Autumn in Vermont brings cooler temperatures and a dramatic shift in scenery. Tourists flock to the Green Mountain State to take in the gorgeous colors; while perennial gardens may be looking shabby, the fall foliage more than makes up for it. The colors emerge as the growing season comes to a close; chlorophyll is no longer being produced due to the decreased amount of sunlight, and the carotenoids and anthocyanins, though always present in the leaves, are finally able to reveal themselves. The brilliance of the colors any given year depends highly on the weather; moisture, temperatures, and the health of the tree affect the degree of color that will emerge. Sugar maples have leaves that turn orange. Oaks, other maple trees, aspen, beech and dogwood also change from green to something on the warm end of the color spectrum.
Sugaring-related tasks mainly involve checking sap pipelines for damage, as it's easier now than when there's snow on the ground!
Around the house, it's harvesting time. There are tomatoes and apples to be canned, pumpkins to carve, beans and broccoli to blanch and freeze, root vegetables and winter squash to be picked and stored in a cool dry space, and firewood to be stacked. Abundance!