Let’s talk real maple syrup. Not the Aunt Jemima or Mrs. Butterworth stuff that contains 2 percent cooking-grade syrup to which a battery of sweeteners, artificial flavors and colors is added in order to make it palatable. For gourmets and purists, you might as well pour turpentine over your pancakes as that stuff.
The real stuff 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 over the past few years) and, in New England, you can taste it fresh out of the evaporator.
It sometimes seems that every maple tree in the region is tapped during this time. Those who don’t tap their own maples rent them out to others who do, and signs all over the road announce that yet another house is selling syrup.
Syrup isn’t the only product of this five- or six-week period — maple sugar, cream and candy area also produced in quantity — but it is the biggest seller.
Buying syrup can be enjoyable, but it’s even more fun to taste it. Among the hundreds of people and farms selling maple syrup are a number of sugarhouses that also provide food, such as pancakes, waffles or French toast, where the various grades of syrup can vie for one’s favor. Considering the lines at some of these breakfast sugarhouses, this appears to be a growing attraction for the region.
Before we talk food, let’s discuss syrup. There are four varieties from which to choose. Grade A light is an almost transparent fluid whose flavor is delicate and best for the kinds of 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, flavorful taste. Grade A dark, which used to be 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 eating. It is less expensive, so commercial syrup companies use it for their syrups, adding other ingredients to get it to taste somewhere between Grade A medium and dark.
Winters that have arrived later and been warmer than usual have cut production in some years. Optimum temperatures are freezing at night, during which time 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 all that much more advanced than those of 50 or 100 years ago. The sap can be retrieved only when it descends in the trees at night. Syrup harvesters usually use power drills with half-inch bits to bore into the trees about two or three inches deep — three taps per tree is about average — and attach either a metal spout and a bucket or a system of plastic tubing. A good maple tree averages up to 30 gallons of sap per season. The sugary sap is then 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, however, 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 the tiny insects called “pear thrips” (they are the size of the head of a pin), which invaded New York State and Massachusetts a few years ago. The pear thrips spend 11 months in the soil but, during the spring, burrow into the maple buds, chewing them with the result that the leaves appear brown and somewhat cup-shaped. This semi-defoliation affects the trees’ photosynthesis, producing less sap that can be tapped. When that happens, many maple syrup producers either cut down on their harvest or just let their trees go fallow for a year, and both affect price and availability.
The Northeast is the largest producer of maple syrup. Massachusetts is a medium-sized producer, filling approximately 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, and Wisconsin and Ohio are also sizable producers, although more in the league of Massachusetts. Oregon, Washington and Connecticut also produce syrup, but in far smaller amounts.
Here’s where you can go for a taste in three New England states:
Massachusetts
A number of places in the west part of the state produce maple syrup, not so much for volume distribution as for demonstration purposes, and they welcome visitors.
The Trailside Museum in Milton (1904 Canton Dr.; 617-333-0690), for instance, offers demonstrations in March. Charging admissions of $4 for adults and $2.50 for children 12 years old and under, museum officials will lead small groups on short hikes where one may see trees being tapped. A small tasting is available at the end.
In Topsfield, the Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary (87 Perkins Row; 508-887-9264) also provides tours for adults ($4) and children ($3) during February and March, while the Massachusetts Audubon Society’s Moose Hill Sanctuary in Sharon (293 Moose Hill St.; 617-784-5691) has created “Sweet Sundays” in March, charging $6 for adults and $3 for children 12 and under. Both of these nature centers permit tastings.
A bit more filling is the pancake breakfast that follows the maple sugaring classes for children up to the age of 10 at the Habitat Institute for the Environment in Belmont (10 Juniper St.; 617-489-5050). The cost is $10. One should call ahead, as the few classes are limited in number.
In the western part of the commonwealth, there are two sugarhouse/eateries in the town of Ashfield and three in 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 Highway 116. Both serve an assortment of food, including pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage and beverages, on Saturdays and Sundays from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m., and they each can seat approximately 70 people. The cost is usually $5 or $6 per person.
The lines at the door can be quite long and, at South Face Farm, the waiting area has been turned into a “maple museum” that houses antique machines and tools that had been used in the past to make maple syrup as well as photographs of people tapping maple trees decades ago.
At Gray’s, 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 from the sap. Some of those who are waiting to eat, or others who need to walk off their breakfasts, tend to roam around the grounds. There is a hillier area of trees (tapped, either with buckets or plastic tubes) on one side, although most people prefer to walk on the bridge over the small brook to the pasture.
A few towns south of Ashfield in Worthington are High Hopes Sugar House (413-238-5919) on Massachusetts Highway 112, the Red Bucket Sugar Shack (413-238-7710) on Kinne Brook Road, off Highway 112, and Windy Hill Farm (413-238-5869) on Sam Hill Road, also off Highway 112. Each serves basically breakfast from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., charging between $2.50 and $6 per person.
In addition to pancakes and waffles, Red Bucket also offers maple milk (syrup used instead of chocolate) and doughnuts topped with maple cream (syrup heated to a higher temperature, then quick cooled and stirred to the consistency of peanut butter).
At these sugarhouses, the evaporator is on all day, and the owners are happy to talk one through the sugaring process as well as offer tastes. The prices for containers of syrup, here and everywhere it is produced, depend on the crop.
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 per person); Cumworth Farm (413-634-5529) on the border of Cummington and Worthington (hence the farm’s abbreviated name) on Highway 112 where one eats in a 200-year-old farmhouse ($4.50 per 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 per person) during the sugaring season and again from June 1 through the end of October; Twin Maples Sugar House (413-268-7925) at 106 South St. in Williamsburg, where one may also pet farm animals; McCray’s (413-533-3714) at 55 Alvord St. in South Hadley, which also offers horse-drawn hayrides and a petting zoo; Girouard Sugar House (413-667-8812) at 21 Allen Coit Rd. in Huntington; North Hadley Sugar Shack (413-585-8820) at 175 River Dr. in North Hadley; and Williams Farm Sugar House (413-773-5186) on Massachusetts Highway 47 in Sunderland, which specializes less in full meals than in maple-oriented snacks such as sugar-on-snow (maple syrup that is cooked down into a taffy-like consistency and poured on top of crushed ice where it hardens as a chocolate sauce does on ice cream, $2), maple cotton (granulated maple sugar used in a cotton candy machine, $1) and doughnuts (40 cents) on which one pours syrup. All of these sugarhouses are open only on weekends.
Vermont
Whether in Massachusetts or Vermont, every sugarhouse offers free tastes of syrup and other products (usually in tablespoon amounts) and some have picnic tables on hand for those who bring their own food. As these are generally farm areas, one can take walks on the grounds — most sugarhouses invite visitors to roam about — in order to burn off calories or just to sightsee. However, it is wise to have boots as the ground may be muddy (it is called the Mud Season here) or still have snow. Off the main highways, many Vermont farms are reached on dirt roads.
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). The menu includes pancakes (buckwheat or regular), ham, sausage, scrambled eggs, baked beans and maple dumplings (dough dropped into boiling syrup).
Twelve miles south of Waterbury on Vermont Highway 100 (off Interstate 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. While most sugarhouses have Grade A light on hand, with a far larger supply of the more popular Grade A medium, the Palmers specialize in the light syrup. The doughnuts are homemade.
Further south in Royalton is the Vermont Sugar House (802-763-8809) near the junction of Vermont Highways 14 and 107, which serves breakfast seven days a week from 6:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. ($1.50-$4.25) that includes pancakes and waffles as well as eggs, bacon, home fries, homemade pies and various specials of the day. As well as touring their maple syrup-making facilities, one may also inspect their cider press, which is in operation during the fall months.
Still further south is Sugar & Spice (802-773-7832) on U.S. Highway 4 in Mendon (5 miles northeast of Rutland), which offers year-round dining. During the sugaring season, however, Sugar & Spice highlights its syrups with a seven-day-a-week 7 a.m.-2 p.m. breakfast ($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, quite poor) weather of recent years, some sugarhouses have discontinued offering food because of the small crop, and others will know what their supply looks to be only by checking their thermometers and sap buckets.
New Hampshire
In the rural areas where maple syrup is produced, the roads aren’t all well marked, and make-shift signs nailed to trees tend to point the way to local sugarhouses off the state roads.
The majority of 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 on the way to the slopes to sample the current crop.
At Stuart and John’s Sugarhouse (603-399-4486) in Westmoreland at the junction of New Hampshire Highways 12 and 63 in the southwest corner of the state, visitors are offered a variety of pancakes, corn fritters and French toast ($3-$5) on weekends from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.
In Newmarket, Bob Cillie’s Great Hill Maples (603-659–3736), off New Hampshire Highway 108 on Hersey Lane, serves breakfast every Saturday and Sunday during March and April from 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Near Franconia, 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 purchases it from local producers, so it’s just as fresh.
Finally, former New Hamsphire Gov. 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 daily pancake breakfast ($3-$4) is served from 9 a.m. to noon in the wood-stove-heated country dining room, with smaller “bunny pancakes” available for children. Mt. Cube can be found on New Hampshire Highway 25A between Interstate Highways 91 and 93, northeast of Lebanon.
