Maple Open House is a yearly Vermont statewide event celebrating the sugaring season. On March 24 and 25, sugar makers
throughout Vermont opened their sugarhouse doors inviting visitors into the experience and enjoy the aroma of boiling maple sap, the sweetly divine taste of maple syrup, and other maple products including sugar on snow.
Come along with us on a virtual tour of the five sugarhouses we visited this year and see the links at the bottom of this posting to view the sugarhouses we visited in previous years. And of course, visit one or more of the sugarhouses yourself and enjoy the Vermont maple aroma and taste as well as the good company of fine-friendly Vermont sugarmakers and farmers. Cherish the experience as well as the maple taste - we sure did.
Mountainview Mapleworks at the (Jim and Cory) Giroux Family Farm - 1324 Kenyon Road Richmond, Vermont. Their sugarhouse is solar powered and they use wood energy to boil sap. They have maple syrup in glass and in plastic containers for sale.
This was the first sugarhouse we visited where the boiler
was going – but Gordy told us, with a little grin, “Nope. We’re not boiling.
We’re just simmering” because there was so little sap available today. (We didn’t get
Gordy’s last name!)
Jim and Cori Giroux’s picturesque sugarhouse is a great
mixture of old and new Vermont, with a wood-fired boiler inside and solar
collectors outside providing the electricity. The couple has been sugaring for
about twenty years and sell donuts, cookies, maple hot dogs, and maple candy
each spring during sap season. We sampled some incredible maple coffee and nearly cleaned out their stock of maple candy!
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The wood heat not only boils the sap;
it also makes for good hand warming. |
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| The homemade jams at $4 a jar are a steal! |
Slopeside Syrup 1090 Cochran Road, Richmond, Vermont, where we were met by co-founder Doug Brown (of the renowned Vermont skiing) Cochran Family.
Most Vermonters know the story of Cochran’s. Located on a
ridge facing the Winooski River just outside of Richmond, the community ski
area was founded by Mickey and Ginny Cochran back in 1961 and became the incubator
and the inspiration for World Cup skiers, Olympians, and countless other
Vermonters who just love the slopes. In the late 1990s, the Cochran family and
friends created a non-profit to keep the small ski area going, and in 2010 four
of Mickey and Ginny’s grandchildren started a sugaring business to use the
thousands of maple trees on the property.
When we got out of the car, we could see skiers whizzing
down the slopes in back of the post-and-beam sugarhouse and wondered if any
would just keep going to get a bit of maple sweetness between runs. Slopeside’s
website mentions that there’s no better way for skiers to re-energize than hot
maple syrup!
Doug Brown
Doug Brown met us at the open door to the sugarhouse. He’s
one of the four grandchildren who started Slopeside. Doug told us that they
have almost 23,000 taps, mostly in sugar maples but with some red maples and a
few silver maples. They weren’t boiling right then (the daytime weather was too
cold for a good sap run) but they’ve made 2600 gallons of syrup so far this
year.
The sugarhouse, which is open year-round for visitors, was
made from hemlocks cut on-site. The beautiful and unusual windows were found at
an architectural salvage place. (There’s
a great video of the real old-fashioned house-raising at Slopesidesyrup.com)
Sugartree Maple Farm 787 Bradley Road, Williston, Vermont operated by Mark and Amy Yandow who share their business with their children Matthew and MacKenzie as well as other very supportive family members and friends. Watch their video to learn what they do and why they LOVE what they do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=129&v=wUSZ7u2ZfrI
The sap wasn’t boiling at our second stop either, but the place
was hopping anyway! A lively snowball fight was going on outside, and there
were many friends and visitors inside, with a passel of children sitting and
coloring and other children enthusiastically eating sugar-on-snow and other
maple treats.
Mark and Amy Yandow used to collect sap and sell it to a
neighboring sugarhouse, but in 2009 they decided they wanted to experience the
full sugaring process themselves. They built a wood-fired sugarhouse and were
ready for business the following spring.
Like most modern sugaring operations, Sugartree uses a
reverse osmosis machine that evaporates up to three-fourths of the water out of
the sap before it goes to the evaporator, saving both time and wood fuel!
With all this great snow, sunshine, and maple aroma in the air why not indulge in a fun-spirited snowball toss. Note the defensive tactic the girls took - at first.
Ok, now time to toss one back.
Go Girl Power!
Maeve was particularly impressed by CVU student Matthew
Yandow, who has started his own business and sells sap to his parents. Matt has
a hundred trees tapped with “sap sacks”, sturdy plastic bags that keep the sap
clean and allow for quick emptying. He spent school vacation this winter
“repurposing" an old boat trailer into a sap-collecting trailer that has cut in
half the number of collection runs he has to make. He’s a busy person at this
time of year: a student, entrepreneur, and high school baseball player!
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| We are grateful for the maple recipes as well as samples. |
Comeau Family Sugarhouse 789 Bradley Lane, Williston, Vermont. Owned and operated by Bernie and Ann Comeau.
Bernie and Ann Comeau’s sugarhouse is just up the hill from Sugartree Maple Farm. The walk gave us a chance
to enjoy the crisp air, beautiful woods, horses, and a shaggy little donkey.
The couple has been sugaring about twenty years. It’s mostly
just the two of them, so Ann said she’s been actually glad for the recent cold
weather “to give us just a little breather!”
End-O-Road Maple 89 Fields Lane Jericho, Vermont. View their short videos here.
We were met by Tony Lamoureux, a son-in-law, who told us
that the farm is owned by brothers Herb and John Neill and Herb’s wife Molly.
They’ve been sugaring for thirty years at their farm at the end of the lane.
Tony said that severe windstorms in recent years have taken
their toll on some of the old maple trees, but there are still somewhere around
2200-2500 taps. He urged us to visit the sheep as well as the sugaring, so our
first stop was to see a lamp born just last Tuesday and its protective mama.
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The attraction for people is the sheep.
The attraction for the sheep is Maple DONUTS - they love'em. |
Herb Neill told us that the kids are debating what to name
the newcomer: Tuesday? Maple? Syrup? When Maeve asked him if the sheep are
raised mainly for their wool or their meat, he laughed. “Mainly to sell maple
syrup!” was his answer. “Everyone loves to see the sheep!”
We did not stop to visit one of our favorite sugarmakers, Tom and Ann Baribault at Browns Trace, Jericho, Vermont. We will be by soon to get a glass gallon of Dark with strong taste or Dark with robust flavor maple syrup.
If the world is not sweet enough for you, visit a Vermont sugarhouse and enjoy the sweet aroma and taste of Vermont and Maple.
Click below for more Maple season photos.
2017 VT/ Maple Sugarhouse Open House Photos
2013 VT. Maple Sugarhouse Open House Photos
2018 Maple Sugaring at Shelburne Farms
Maple tapping at Jericho Center Green
Community Maple tapping Wheeler Park, South Burlington, VT.
Vistas we viewed along with our maple sugar open house tours. (These are at Kenyon Road Richmond VT.)
with towropes and free Slopeside Maple Syrup
at the top of the summit. 
Key sponsors for this awesome new attraction in
Jericho are Jericho
Country Store, Yukon
Charlie’s, Burton,
and Slopeside Maple
Syrup. 
