Sugarmakers open doors to public on open house weekend

With sugaring season in full swing, Vermont Maple Sugarmakers throughout the state are hosting a Spring Maple Open House Weekend on Saturday and Sunday. Join them in a celebration of the current season’s crop of liquid gold.

Boiling maple sap into syrup is a time-honored tradition in the Northeast, to the olfactory delight of anyone who has spent time in a steamy sugarhouse while inhaling the sweet maple scent of the season.

Sugarmaker Dave Folino has spent over four decades tapping trees in the woods of Starksboro’s Hillsboro Mountain. 

While the maple season likely won’t be in full swing for another month or two, the unusually warm freeze-and-thaw cycle in December enabled some county sugarmakers to already begin collecting and boiling sap. 

The United States Department of Agriculture’s final tally of this spring’s season showed that Vermont is once again the leading producer of maple syrup nationally. 

USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) will send the 2023 Maple Syrup Inquiry to approximately 1,600 Northeastern producers on April 28.

As April yields budding maple trees and warmer temperatures, sugarmakers throughout Addison County are pulling taps and wrapping up this year’s maple season. 

The sap is running and the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association is hosting Spring Maple Open House Weekends on March 25 and 26 and again on April 1 and 2. 

Sugaring is a Vermont tradition. Now it’s part of a tradition at Bristol Elementary School as well.

Despite a famous groundhog’s prediction earlier this month that the country was destined for six more weeks of winter weather, Vermont has experienced abnormally warm temperatures this February. 

For many years, Mike Christian has played an important role in promoting Vermont maple to the greater New England region through the VMSMA booth at the Eastern States Exposition (“The Big E”) in West Springfield, Mass.

After taking two years off because of the pandemic, the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers’ Association has brought back its popular maple open house weekend events.

With a bit of optimism on a late winter day, you put on your boots and outdoor gear, thrust a couple of tools in your pockets, grab a stack of buckets and lids, and head into the woods. It’s about to be sugaring season. We began sugaring shortly after mov … (read more)

ADDISON COUNTY — It’s been cold in Addison County over the past several months. It’s almost as if we had a proper Vermont winter. It was so cold, in fact, that sugaring got off to a late start this year. Many maple sugarmakers had become accustomed over t … (read more)

The Sheldon Museum invites you to take a sweet mystery tour on Saturday, March 20, from 10 a.m.-4 p.m., and find museum founder Henry Sheldon at five Addison County sugarhouses. At each sugarhouse, look for a full-size image of Henry and take a picture wi … (read more)