How did your family first get involved in making maple?

 Our family has been making maple for three generations. In the 1970s our grandfather, great grandfather, and some other family members managed small-scale maple operations. Wade and his cousin also had a small maple operation in high school. His family’s maple business grew for years until the ice storm of 1998. The storm damaged many maple trees and went out of production until Ned and Wade brought the sugarbush back into production in 2009. 

Tell me about your maple production. 

We have 2,250 taps on Alstead Hill in Keene, NY. Plans are in place to double that for next year. The sap is collected through a network of tubing that connects the maple trees to a storage container. We then boil the sap in the sugar house with a wood-fired evaporator and use a reverse osmosis machine. We collect sap from a combination of Red Maple trees and Sugar Maple trees which gives our syrup an amazing flavor. 

What does the maple season look like for your family?

For us, maple season is about six or so weeks of long days, seven days a week. Our whole family pitches in and helps where we can. We all go out into the woods and tap the trees, check the lines periodically for leaks, as soon as the kids Lauren and Avery get home from school we run right up to the sugar house and they help their dad and grandfather. The kids help label the syrup, run the blower for the evaporator, draw and filter the syrup and clean up at the end of the night. Many nights during Maple Season, we eat meals right in the sugar house. While Ned leads on making the maple and managing the equipment, I primarily manage our stock, sales, and deliveries. The kids walk to our farm stand and collect the money and restock it each day. Family friends also help during sugar season firing the evaporator, cutting and hauling wood, and keeping us stocked with snacks and drinks. At the end of the season, we all head out into the woods to untap the trees and clean it all up.