Valley Bounty: Tradition in every drop: Tapping into local sugarhouses for Massachusetts Maple Month

For some people, the sweetest time of the year is upon us — maple sugar season! Maple is the first major crop of the calendar year for our region, and signals the thawing of winter, promising that spring will soon follow. March is Massachusetts Maple Month, with the weekend of March 7 and 8 celebrating the golden elixir with hands-on maple sugaring experiences, tours and tastings at sugarhouses across the state.

Local maple is a story about connections, both among trees and among people. Maple farmers tend their sugarbush — a group or stand of maple trees — throughout the year, and the sugar shacks or sugar houses delight generations of families in early spring as a form of agritourism. 

Lisa Davenport, owner of Davenport Maple Farm Restaurant in Shelburne, explains, “Basically, agritourism is a chance for us to educate the public about farming in general, and about making maple syrup in particular.” Families come for pancakes, served with a blend of science and history at the same time. She continues, “Visitors can come right up to the evaporator, watch us boiling, see all of the equipment and talk to Norm and me about what we’re doing.” The sugar house itself tells the history of sugaring, with wall displays of tins, buckets, molds and tools. “We have quite a museum, both of sugaring and of farming,” says Davenport. 

Education is served alongside pancakes at the North Hadley Sugar Shack. Owner Shelly Boisvert, says, “We serve breakfasts Fridays through Sundays, but visitors are welcome to check out our evaporator room whenever we’re boiling.” Boisvert explains that diagrams and exhibits on the walls explain the evolution of sugaring from buckets to tubing. She continues, “We have a few maple trees right behind the evaporator room that we have tapped. We usually do different styles, so we go from the old, hollowed-out wooden spile to what we do use nowadays, like a stainless steel tap so people can see how things have changed.” 

Steve Holt of Steve’s Sugar Shack in Westhampton, built his sugar house with education in mind as well. “I wanted to teach people how to make maple syrup and I built the sugar house accordingly, with the sugar house actually in the restaurant.” Holt explains the proximity offers a natural opportunity for tasting. He says, “Visitors literally sit at the tables and watch me make the product. At some points, when I’m drying off syrup, they take hot syrup right from the finishing rig. All I do when we’re open is talk about how we make maple sugar.” 

Visiting sugar shacks is a great family activity for busting cabin fever. This year’s winter has been more of a classic New England winter, with cold temperatures and deep snow. The farmers predict the sugar will flow in March this year.

Davenport says, “The trees really need the deep freeze, a good solid dormancy for the winter. It’s just a matter of when the weather starts to warm up—the sap will run when the weather gets above freezing. But again, the trees are frozen, and it’s going to take a while for the trees to thaw out.”

Holt explains that for sugar to run, “all that really matters is we need a freezing night and a thawing day. We need both simultaneously — we can’t have a warm night and a warm day and say, ‘oh, that’s going to be running good today.’ If it didn’t freeze last night, it will not run. It has to have the cycle of cold and warm during the season. The temperatures going from 25 at night to 45 in the day is a perfect scenario, but if it’s 28 at night and it only gets up to 33 during the day, that’s a non-run.” 

Sugaring is still farming, and it is still winter. Boisvert shares, “It’s hard to farm in this kind of weather, don’t get me wrong on that aspect. But for the trees, a deep, cold, freeze, hard winter, is not something we’re afraid of. The trees do wonderful and sometimes we get some great sap after those seasons. So we’re hoping for a great year. If anything, we kind of like this weather better than no snow. It gives the trees some moisture by their roots and it insulates them.”

Sugar season is short, and a great way to orient visitors to the seasons on a farm. Families come to the North Hadley sugar shack for pancakes, but in the end, it’s about making memories. Boisvert says, “There’s a lot of people who have made it a family tradition. They come visit us every year, and it’s great to see those faces. Sugaring is a great way to show what sustains our family farm. We’re here year-round. Families may come for the maple syrup, cotton candy and maple cream, but they can come back for flowers for their garden, meat for summer barbecues or the artisan market in the fall.”

Welcoming the public to the farm offers other intangibles to visitors. Davenport notes, “Visitors get a gorgeous view. They get to see a different world from what 80% of them have ever known, while learning about farming and life in the boonies.” Receiving visitors expands the world for the farmer too. She continues, “Living on the farm, we wake up in a postcard. It’s beautiful up here. I enjoy talking to people who come from all over. I grew up 20 minutes from here and never left, but visitors bring their world to us here.”

For Holt, serving pancakes and educating the public spans geography and time. The restaurant is set up with long church tables that fit 10 or 12 people. People share a table with others. He says, “Right now, if you go to any restaurant where families come and sit, you can look out across the crowd and see everybody’s looking at their phones. When they come to my sugar house, everybody’s talking, because you sit down next to somebody and you kind of feel obligated to say, ‘Oh, have you been here before?’ or ‘Do you know Steve?’ And I say every year, ‘2,000 of my friends come to visit me for sugaring season.’ I love that.”

Davenport Maple Farm Restaurant is open Saturdays and Sundays, from Feb. 21 to March 29, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. They are located at 111 Tower Road in Shelburne. Find Little Mohawk Road and follow signs. Ignore GPS — Apple and Google send drivers over dirt roads. See their Facebook page for more details. Their farm store is open during the season and features maple syrup, maple cream, maple candy, and a variety of products from Barberic Farm. They also sell maple products at the Grow Food Northampton Farmers’ market.

The North Hadley Sugar Shack offers breakfasts on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from Feb. 13 through March between 7 a.m. and 2 p.m. They are located at 181 River Road in Hadley. The North Hadley Market sells maple syrup and a wide variety of farm products year-round; they are open 7 a.m.-5 p.m. The farm is on the Hadley snowmobile trails — buy your snowmobile passes at the market after you have breakfast. Learn more at northhadleysugarshack.com, Facebook and Instagram.

Steve’s Sugar Shack serves breakfast on Saturdays and Sundays from Feb. 21 through April 12, from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 34 North Road in Westhampton. Maple syrup, maple cream, maple sugar and granular sugar are for sale at the sugar shack. Get updates on their Facebook page and stevessugarshack.com. 

Lisa Goodrich is a communications coordinator for Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA). To find maple breakfasts and demonstrations, see CISA’s online guide at buylocalfood.org.