Sugar Bushes and Sugar Houses

Wow - I had a blast in VT this weekend! We saw so much it's going to take a couple of days to blog about it. But first, Sukey says I have to write about the Maple Syrup - her favorite food in the world, and now, I have to say, mine too. This weekend, VT was having an open house of Sugar Houses, the places where they make the syrup. We also got to visit the Sugar Bushes, the forest of trees where the sap is collected which is used to make maple syrup. We visited four sugar houses:

1. Sweet Maple Alpaca (they had maple syrup and alpacas!) in Westminster, VT
2. Harlow's Sugar House in Putney, VT
3. Sweet Whisper Farms (the sugarhouse was a replica of a synagogue!) in Readsboro, VT
4. The Corse Farm in Whitingham, VT

My favorite sugar house was the synagogue. It's a replica of a very old one (17th century) in easter Poland. They made kosher syrup there and used horses to go around and collect the sap.

The guy who worked there was really funny and told us a lot about how syrup was made. There were a bunch of people from New York City up visiting the sugar house too.


Actually, this isn't the guy who works there, but looks like him. This is my new friend, Moe - he loves snow! He was visiting for the weekend and is from Florida - not. This is the guy who runs the place, in orange below - he looks a little like a jewish Santa Clause.

We learned that to make syrup, you first had to go around and collect sap from all the Maple trees. The sap pours into a bucket hanging on a tree that you empty periodically.

Then, you bring it inside and boil the sap to turn it into syrup. It takes over 50 gallons of sap to make only 1 gallon of syrup. That's a lot of work.

And a lot of steam! Behind me is the syrup boiling. Do you like my new winter coat and hat? It's pretty cold up north.

At the last place, the Corse Farm, they use wood to make fires to boil the syrup. This is just one batch of wood they had. I think it would take more work to cut the wood than to collect the sap.

Once they've boiled the sap into syrup, you have to figure out what grade of syrup it is. There is the light "fancy" stuff, the dark amber and everything in between. I'm holding the testing set that they use to classify what kind of syrup was just made up to the window. It changes from day to day.

And the end result is gallon's of syrup they then sell. It's like gold - so much work and energy to make so little syrup. I'm going to be more careful about not leaving any syrup to go to waste when I eat my pancakes.

We got to test some syrup, I liked the darker color - it tasted the best. I have to say by the end I was in Maple Syrup Heaven!