Be on the lookout for bellowing smoke stacks sometime in late February. This means that the 2009 maple sugaring season has begun.
For many, the draw is the aroma of the sugarhouse — the addictive smell of boiling maple — and the opportunity to taste the warm syrup. For others, it’s the chance to venture out of the house. “After being cooped up in the house all winter, I’m ready for a tromp out in the woods to tap trees and put up tubing. It’s nice to get out this time of the year,” says Barbara Lassonde, publicist for the New Hampshire Maple Producers Association and a maple syrup producer with her husband, Don.
Van Webb of Harding Hill Farm in Sunapee agrees. “I love this time of the year — spring, change of seasons, the renewal,” he says.
Even if you know how maple syrup is made — from tapping the sugar maples to boiling sap in an evaporator over a blazing hot fire — it is still a treat to visit working sugarhouses and learn more about the families who continue the ancient tradition of making syrup. Will Leavitt may have a new sugarhouse, a bright red building built in winter 2005, but his family has “been doing some sort of sugaring for over 50 years,” the Sunapee resident says.
The sugarhouse on Harding Hill Farm was built in the 1920s. “It’s quite an antique,” says Webb. “My dad started in that sugar house in 1963 or 1964, I’ve helped since the 1970s and now my son is going to start sugaring this year.” The only modern technology is a reverse osmosis machine; Webb still uses an old wood-fired evaporator to make the syrup, between 225 and 350 gallons a season.
New Hampshire Maple Weekend will be held on Saturday and Sunday, March 28 and 29, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. (and later). It’s free to visit the sugarhouses in operation; just bring along your wallet to purchase a jug of warm syrup. For more information, contact the New Hampshire Maple Producers Association at (603) 225-3757 or go to their Web site at www.nhmapleproducers.com
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Where to Go
Courser Farm
Jerry Courser
374 Schoodac Road
Warner
456-3521
Harding Hill Farm
Van Webb
524 Stagecoach Road
Sunapee
863-6493
Leavitt Family Maple
Will Leavitt
546 North Road
Sunapee
763-5323
Sweet Maples Sugarhouse
Jeff, Pieter and Doug Sweet
694 Route 103
Newbury
763-6111
Valley View Maple Farm
Ben and Gaetane Kezar
Route 114
Springfield
763-5661
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