Author: tgicycling

Well that was quick.

Everyone I need to sadly report that our maple season lasted 6 days. The long winter and the quick shift to 70 deg weather followed by no nights below freezing led us to shut down the sugarhouse. The sap we got this past week was bad, so we couldn’t use it for production.

Needless to say we have no syrup to sell. The wee bit of syrup we did produce was super dark, some of the darkest syrup I’ve ever seen.

Let’s hope Mother Nature is kinder to us next year so we can fully utilize the improvements we have made for the 2019 season.

Right now we are preparing the hives for more bee’s. The old hives are getting touched up with new paint & art and the electric fence was tested today.

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So much snow…

Hi Everyone. I know it’s been a while since we have provided an update. Needless to say it’s been a long cold winter and the sap just started flowing this past week. Right now we are about 3.5 weeks behind last year and we just started boiling the sap this weekend.

To give you an idea of how much snow we had this winter as of this morning we still have 2’+ in the front yard and there is still some snow left on the sugar home roof. We spent most of the weekends this winter up at Smugglers Notch skiing and as of last check they received 371″+ of snow. Yes that is over 30 feet of snow this winter.

For 2019 we are attempting to be more efficient with at the addition of a reverse osmosis machine. This allows us to increase the sugar content of the sap before boiling. Thru this process we extract excess water from the sap and create more concentrated sap to boil. This saves us both time and wood for the evaporator.

We will be updating the site more often as boiling and production continues. Thanks for your patience. 😁

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Holiday Gift Baskets

Twin Bears Maple Works is going to be doing a limited run of holiday ‘Vermont Breakfast’ gift baskets. The basket will include: 1 pint of our 2018 Maple Syrup (medium amber), 14oz of our freshly roasted whole bean Holiday Blend coffee (medium roast) and the ever-awesome organic pancake mix from Rogers Farmstead.  Add some bacon and you have a perfect Vermont Breakfast.

 

We will be taking orders and shipping based on requested delivery dates. Please allow us a few days lead time from the date you place your order till the date it ships.  We are roasting the beans as orders are placed and just finishing the last of syrup bottling.

 

Gift baskets will be $30 and the USPS Flat rate shipping is $12. Baskets will come in holiday packing and the shipping quote applies for CONUS addresses. We will include holiday cards with your personal message for those folks sending this as a gift. Please message us with any questions.

The trees have started to bud and..

Maple season has come to an end. It’s been a crazy and busy 6 weeks. We have a little syrup left to bottle but most is ready to be labeled and shipped to its new home for pancakes, toast, granola or all the other amazing uses for this natural sweetener.

Here is the nutritional information for those that need to know (zero fat 😏). Yep it’s all natural sugars from our colorful maple trees.

As will all real maple syrup it needs to be refrigerated once opened. Or kept in the freezer for longer storage. It won’t really freeze, just get super thick. There are more storage tips on ever bottle.

Unless your a heavy user the pint size will work for most people. We have a few half gallons, but I suspect those will go quick. Most of the syrup is Grade A medium Amber. We have a few bottles that are dark Amber.

We will have prices posted very shortly. If interested start sending us a FB message or email from the site. We will put everyone on the list, first come first served.

We will try to consolidate orders to save on shipping, i.e. if you live near someone else else that ordered (and Freinds) and want to save $ we will ship together and split the shipping. If you prefer to not save shipping please note that in your message and we will ship separate.

Thanks for all the positive words and support this year!

More Snow.. Less Sugar..

With another Nor’easter bearing down New England we are expecting another 1-2′ of snow here in the Northern Green Mountains.

With this snow and all day temps below 32 degrees means no sap flow. So this weekend will have to be a ski weekend instead of a maple weekend. We are fortunate to be located just north of Stowe and a lil’ north-east of Smugglers Notch.

We hope everyone travels safe over the next few days and enjoys all this fresh snow.

Boiling has commenced.

We started boiling the sap tonight. With another winter storm approaching we needed to boil up the sap we collected the past couple days before we get the next dump of snow Wednesday -> Thursday.

The steam was starting to pour from the roof vents. I tried to capture it before the sun went down.

The evaporator was steaming strong once we got hot:

We got everything working smooth and we will probably be boiling again Thursday or Friday night.

Really happy with this new evaporator from CDL Maple Equipment. 🍁 🍁

We didn’t want to be bored..

We were thinking we didn’t have enough going on with two active toddlers, work and 100 trees tapped, so we tapped another 100 trees today. 🍁 🍁 The Garmin said I took 9900 steps & covered 4.9 miles installing fresh taps.

So now we need to collect and haul the sap from this location daily to the sugar shack. So glad we bought a small 4wd tractor last fall. We picked up more 55 gallon food grade barrels yesterday.

Hers a quick video of the other sugarbush.