Sugarhouse restaurants are one of the joys of life in New England. Open only for a limited number of days each year, they reconnect us with our agricultural roots and celebrate one of our area’s signature flavors.
Tom McCrumm and his wife Judy Haupt got into the maple trade in 1984 when they purchased property on Watson Spruce Corner Road in Ashfield.
“Judy was living outside Amherst, and I was living in the mountains on the Virginia/West Virginia border,” McCrumm recalled. “I had done some sugaring with a friend in Vermont in the 1970s and was sugaring with friends (in Virginia) in the late ’70s/early ’80s as well.”
He said he wanted to move to New England to start a maple-sugaring business.
“I had a friend who lived in Ashfield, so I started looking around the hilltowns. The old Lesure farm sugarhouse here in Ashfield had been sold to some other folks, and they were interested in selling after a few years here.”
Soon the couple was running a sugaring business, including a popular restaurant. They called the enterprise South Face Farm.
This maple season will be the last one for South Face Farm’s restaurant, according to McCrumm. “Judy and I are both 70, and we both love to ski. Judy retired a few years ago and now skis a lot, but it’s a tough time of year for a sugarmaker to have any free time.
“We want to ski a lot more while we still can, as well as travel more, ride our bikes more, and other things. I’m only fully retiring from the sugarhouse-restaurant business. I still plan to make maple syrup, but on a reduced scale so I have more time to ski.”
This year he will continue to make as much syrup as he can, but his neighbors, the Olanyks, are running the restaurant kitchen.
After the season ends on April 3, McCrumm will probably sell his kitchen equipment and some of the antique food tins and cooking implements that add to the restaurant’s old-fashioned charm.
McCrumm spent 18 years as the coordinator of the Massachusetts Maple Producers Association and loves the syrup he makes.
“Maple is a very unique flavor. It has never been able to be duplicated by flavor chemists,” he told me. “Artificial maple flavor tastes like — well, it’s artificial. [Maple is] also a unique food product to this part of the world.”
I asked McCrumm about the highs and lows of his three-decade stretch as a restaurateur. “It’s been fun and a lot of hard work,” he said. “The constant problems with any agricultural business are usually based around the weather.”
“On the plus side,” he added, “I’ve developed a successful business here and have wonderful customers, many of whom have become good friends … I’ve seen parents come with their small children; seen those kids grow up, go off to college, get married, come with their new wives, and then come with their own children.
“Customers have been faithful to come every year for 20 to 30 years. Many come three or four times a year. Some even come every weekend, every year. I’ll miss seeing those nice people.”
If you’d like to experience the restaurant before it closes, visit South Face Farm for breakfast or lunch any Saturday or Sunday through April 3. (The restaurant will be closed on Easter.)
Tom McCrumm shared South Face’s popular waffle recipe for those who would like a taste of the restaurant after April. Naturally, he suggests serving your waffles with South Face Farm maple syrup.
This recipe is cut down from the large one used at South Face Farm’s restaurant. You will end up with leftover dry mixture, which you may either play with (I would suggest trying to mix it with 1 egg, 1 cups milk, and 5 tablespoons oil) or discard.
for the dry mixture:
3 cups flour
1 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons baking powder (substitute baking soda for half of this if you’re using buttermilk)
teaspoon salt
for the wet mixture:
2 eggs
2 cups regular milk or buttermilk
cup vegetable oil
Instructions:
Combine the dry mixture in a bowl, stirring it with a whisk to make sure it comes together well. Set it aside.
In another bowl combine the eggs, milk and oil, blending well. Add 2 cups of the dry mixture and stir gently until all the ingredients are combined. Cook according to the instructions for your waffle iron. Serves 6.
Tinky Weisblat of Hawley is the author of “The Pudding Hollow Cookbook” and “Pulling Taffy.” If you have a suggestion for a future Blue Plate Special, please email Tinky at Tinky@TinkyCooks.com. For more information about Tinky, visit her website: TinkyCooks.com