Vermont Maple Syrup

We drove northeast to St. Johnsbury, Vermont, on the border with New Hampshire to visit Maple Grove Farms of Vermont. We asked our GPS for shortest distance so we spent some more time on those hardpacked dirt roads that are the shortest way to get from here to there. We see lots of traffic on those roads. Must be fun in winter. Guess that's why Vermont's unofficial car is the Subaru. St. Johnsbury is one of the larger towns in Vermont with a population of 6,300. Old downtown with lots of brick buildings and it looks prosperous. It's growth came from Thaddeus Fairbanks' invention of the platform scale in the 1830's and George Cary's idea of flavoring plug tobacco with maple sugar. The Fairbanks Scale and maple sugar industries are still big here.



But on to our destination, Maple Grove Farms Factory. In 1915 two women started making maple syrup candy on their family farms. The business grew and today this brick building, and the huge 3 story factory next door comprise the largest packer of maple syrup in the United States and the largest manufacturer of maple candies in the world. We took a tour in the brick building, but everyone was at a safety meeeting and there was no action. Once again John and I were the only ones on the tour.

Interesting fact, they bottle maple syrup for Cracker Barrel restaurants, and make the dressings and steak sauce bottled under Emeril's label.

But we learned that a tree is usually 40 years old before it is tapped and most trees only have one tap. If a tree is larger than 30 inches in diameter, it may have two. It takes about 40 gallons of sap boiled down to make one gallon of syrup because, by law, the sugar content must be 66.9%. Sap from the tree is 2 to 2-1/2% percent sugar. Tapping is usually done about the first week of March, depending on the weather. It takes warm days to make the sap run.

There is a lot of maple syrup for sale in Vermont and not just in stores. We've passed many houses with a sign out front advertising pure maple syrup. It would be fun to be here during "sugaring" season and go to one of the small places and smell the air while the boil the sap.