Let`s talk real maple syrup, the stuff that gets made from the end of February to the beginning of April, assuming the weather doesn`t put a crimp in the whole process, as it sometimes has in the last few years.
When you drive through New England, you can taste maple syrup right out of the evaporator.
Syrup isn`t the only product of this five- or six-week period: Maple sugar, cream and candy are also produced in quantity, but maple syrup is the big seller.
Buying syrup can be enjoyable, but it`s even more fun to taste. Among the hundreds of people and farms selling maple syrup are sugarhouses that also provide food to put the syrup on, such as pancakes, waffles or French toast. The various grades of syrup can vie for one`s favor. Lines form at some of the breakfast sugarhouses, indicating their popularity.
There are four varieties from which to choose:
– Grade A light is an almost transparent fluid whose flavor is delicate and best for pancakes, waffles or whatever that contain fruit or nuts whose flavor would be overpowered by a heavier syrup.
– Grade A medium is the most popular syrup, with its golden color and mild flavor.
– Grade A dark, called Grade B before the State of Vermont changed the rating system a few years back, is a stronger-flavored topping that is to syrup what espresso is to regular coffee.
– Grade B, which used to be Grade C, is used for cooking but not specifically for the table. It is less expensive, so commercial syrup companies use it for their products, adding other ingredients to get it to taste somewhere between Grade A medium and dark.
The Northeast is the largest producer of maple syrup. Massachusetts is a medium-sized producer, with some 40,000 gallons a year. In contrast, Vermont produces 500,000 gallons, while New Hampshire, in a good year, produces about 100,000 gallons. New York State leads the country, with almost a million gallons annually.
Outside New England, Wisconsin and Ohio are sizeable producers, although more in the league of Massachusetts. Oregon, Washington and Connecticut also produce syrup, but in far smaller amounts.
Western Massachusetts
Here`s where some of the best sugarhouses are:
There are two sugarhouse/eateries each in the towns of Ashfield and Worthington, both hill towns at the foot of the Berkshire Mountains. In Ashfield, there is Gray`s Sugarhouse (413-625-6559) on Barnes Road, off Massachusetts Highway 116; and South Face Farm (413-628-3268) on Watson Spruce Corner Road, also off Massachusetts 116.
Both serve an assortment of food, including pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage and beverages, from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays; each seats about 70 people. The cost is usually $5 or $6 a person. In both, one eats on picnic tables in a barn, with cooks preparing food on one side while, on another side, huge quantities of maple sap are being stirred in big evaporators that remove most of the water.
South of Ashfield in Worthington are the Red Bucket Sugar Shack
(413-238-7710) on Kinne Brook Road, off 112, and Windy Hill Farm
(413-238-5869) on Sam Hill Road, also off Massachusetts Highway 112. Each serves basically breakfast from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., charging $2.50 to $5 a person.
At these sugarhouses, an evaporator is on all day, and the owners are happy to explain the sugaring process and offer tastes. The prices for containers of syrup, here and everywhere else it is produced, depend on the crop.
Optimum temperatures for tapping are freezing at night, when the maple sap descends in the trees, and in the 40s during the day, when the sap rises again. Sap that rises too quickly, or that doesn`t descend, cannot be tapped. Unlike hothouse tomatoes and chemically treated oranges, maple syrup continues to be subject to the whims of nature. The techniques of maple tree tappers are not much more advanced than those of 50 or 100 years ago. The sap can only be retrieved when it descends in the trees at night.
Syrup harvesters usually use power drills with 1/2-inch bits to bore into the trees about two or three inches deep-three taps per tree is about average-and attach a metal spout and a bucket or a system of plastic tubing.
A good maple tree averages up to 30 gallons of sap a season.
The sap is boiled down for hours in giant evaporators. It usually takes 40 to 70 gallons of sap to produce one gallon of maple syrup.
When the maple trees begin to bud, the sugaring season is over, regardless of the calendar.
Variations in the weather not only decide the volume of a given harvest, but also determine the grades of syrup produced. At the beginning of the season, Grade A light syrup prevails. When the temperature isn`t just right, light syrup is usually the first casualty. The medium syrup is produced during the middle of the sugaring season, with dark syrup coming at the very end.
Other than the temperature, maple syrup production has been affected by acid rain, road salt (the melted runoff) and pear thrips-insects the size of the head of a pin.
Other food-serving sugarhouses include Hamilton Orchards (508-544-6867)
off U.S. Highway 202 at the north end of Quabbin Reservoir in New Salem, which serves pancakes and homemade apple pies and pastries from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
($4-$5 a person); Cumworth Farm (413-634-5529) on the border of Cummington and Worthington (hence the farm`s abbreviated name) on Massachusetts 112, where one eats in a 200-year-old farmhouse ($4.50 a person, serving from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.); Gould`s Sugarhouse (413-625-6170) on Massachusetts Highway 2 in Shelburne, which serves pancakes from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. ($4-$6 a person)
during the sugaring season and again from June 1 through the end of October.
All of those sugarhouses are open only on weekends.
Scattered in Vermont
There are fewer sugarhouses in Vermont that serve food, and they are scattered around the state.
Drum Hill Maples (802-868-4877) at 7 St. Armand Rd. in Highgate Center, near the Canadian border, is one that makes the trip worthwhile, offering a $7.50 all-you-can-eat menu on two Sundays during the sugaring season (call ahead to find out which Sundays) that includes pancakes (buckwheat or regular), ham, sausage, scrambled eggs, baked beans and maple dumplings.
Twelve miles south of Waterbury on Vermont Highway 100 (off Interstate Highway 89) in Waitsfield in central Vermont is Everett and Kathryn Palmer`s sugarhouse (802-496-3696), which serves doughnuts and light syrup every day during the season.
Most sugarhouses have Grade A light on hand, with a far larger supply of the more popular Grade A medium, but the Palmers specialize in the light syrup.
Farther south in Royalton is the Vermont Sugar House (802-763-8809), near the junction of Vermont Highways 14 and 107, which serves breakfast from 6:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. seven days a week ($1.50-$4.25) that includes pancakes and waffles as well as eggs, bacon, home fries, homemade pies and various specials of the day.
Still farther South is Sugar & Spice (802-773-7832) on U.S. Highway 4 in Mendon (five miles northeast of Rutland), which offers year-round dining. During the sugaring season, however, Sugar & Spice highlights its syrups with a 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. breakfast seven days a week ($3-$5.50) that includes pancakes and waffles.
Larger groups might want to call ahead to ensure (or reserve) space, and others may want to check that syrup is being made, especially if a trip is being planned for late February or early April.
With the uneven (and sometimes poor) sugaring weather of recent years, sugarhouses cannot predict their supply until checking their thermometers and sap buckets.
Try New Hampshire
Most Granite State syrup producers tend to limit their seasonal offerings to tasting tours and occasional sugar-on-snow parties, but there are a few choice sites to sample the current crop on the way to the slopes.
At Stuart and John`s Sugarhouse (603-399-4486) in Westmoreland, at the junction of New Hampshire Highways 12 and 63, visitors are offered a variety of pancakes, corn fritters and French toast ($3-$5) from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends.
In Newmarket, Bob Cillie`s Great Hill Maples (603-659-3736), off New Hampshire 108 on Hersey Lane, serves breakfast from 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. every Saturday and Sunday during March and April.
Farther North, Polly`s Pancake Parlor (603-823-5575), at Hildex Farm on New Hampshire Highway 117, just off Interstate Highway 93 in Sugar Hill, is another pancake house, serving breakfasts from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. ($3-$6). Polly`s does not produce its own syrup, but buys it from local producers, so it is just as fresh.
Finally, former New Hampshire governor Meldrim Thompson himself boils and barrels maple syrup for visitors to his Mt. Cube cross-country ski touring center and farm (603-353-4709). A pancake breakfast ($3-$4) is served from 9 a.m. to noon daily in the woodstove-heated country dining room, with small
”bunny pancakes” available for children. Mt. Cube is on New Hampshire Highway 25A between Interstates 91 and 93.
