Benchmark Inns of Woodstock Invite Guests for Sappy Stories, Tours of Local Maple Syrup Farms

Golden Eggs Out. Liquid Gold In, or How To Experience Sappy Stories

WOODSTOCK, VT, Feb. 23 -- Most of us by age 10 give up on geese and golden eggs. But trees and liquid gold? That's another story.

In the greater Woodstock, VT, region at least four farms will share sappy stories and samples come about mid March when a tree species called maple starts to resemble an operating room with buckets hanging from spouts on what are called tap holes, and plastic tubes, aligned with other tap holes, stretch sometimes for miles from the tree to the sugarhouse.

Some trees that may have over time been maimed and neglected begin oozing sap from their wounds, until they're virtually dripping like a lactating mammal.

All of this happens over a four-to-six-week stretch that begins when the days get warm and the nights are below freezing, sometime around mid to late March. Snow this time of year is called sugar snow.

This virtual quickening of nature and man is about a cash crop called maple syrup. Right now there's 20 percent more demand for Vermont maple syrup than farmers can produce, according to state officials who note that Vermont is the largest producer of pure maple syrup in the U.S.  Keep these stats in mind when you've put on your muck boots and maybe even snowshoes to trek to a sugar house to watch the multiples of  60 gallons of sap from which water is  boiled out or evaporated to make one gallon of maple syrup. The result is akin to liquid gold, say some.

Just like milking cows, when the sap is running, farmers have to collect the sap buckets or tend to the hose lines 24 hours a day because a worst case scenario is to have this liquid gold spilling out onto the snow. There's an actual treat called sugar on snow when the sap that's been boiled down to syrup is poured hot over the snow. You eat it like a pudding in a bowl with a spoon. Throughout the year other Vermont maple products found on gourmet grocery shelves are maple butter, maple cream, maple mustard, maple pumpkin butter. It's noted that restaurateurs who promote Vermont maple syrup on their menus can charge more for their syrup-related offerings.

In the greater Woodstock region a collection of small inns will celebrate maple sugar season by offering pure Vermont maple syrup in as many of their recipes as possible. Please see www.Benchmarkinns.com for lodging information.
 
Following are four farms close by Benchmark Inns that will be sugarin' off in about a month. They welcome visitors. Please call ahead.

Barnard: Edmunds Maple Hill Farm (802) 234-9401 maplefrm@sover.net
Woodstock: Elm Grove Farm (802) 457-3888 mdoten@vpr.net
Woodstock: Bourdon Maple Farm (802) 457-3787 bmaple@sover.net
Sugarhouse Phone: (802) 457-3787
Woodstock: Sugarbush Farm (800) 281-1757 contact@sugarbushfarm.com


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