Sugaring: A Repost

Guest Post by Hardscrabble Farmer

ORDER YOUR SYRUP NOW!!! OPERATORS ARE WAITING – HARDSCRABBLE

Please contact me either by phone or email @ (603) 938-2043 or [email protected] and we’ll box up your order as soon as the last pint is boiled.

Well, it’s that time of year again. We hung the last bucket just before dark last night, the temperature dropping with the light. My knees were aching and my fingers split from the cold, but the trees were tapped and when the Sun comes up in the morning and the air begins to warm the sap will flow.

Last year I posted a piece about making maple syrup on The Burning Platform, and near the end of the essay, I made mention that I would likely have enough to sell if anyone was interested in trying some authentic, wood-fired, old-school maple syrup that we had made on our farm. The response was overwhelming.

We had no system set up to run credit cards, so we packed each bottle in wood shavings instead of foam peanuts, made up invoices by hand on notebook paper and sent the shipments off all across the USA and abroad using the honor system- We sent our hard earned sweetness out with nothing more than the faith that kind of people who would read the kinds of things I wrote would respond with equal honesty and send me back their hard earned dollars to help us expand our operation for the next year.

And they did and more. I received packages of corn bread mix and dried bean soups from the southwest, handmade knives and bottles of wine from the Pacific Northwest, a beautiful pair of hand-knit mittens that I have worn all winter long on the coldest days of the year with pride and joy. There were books and cards, extra cash for the things I wrote and a seemingly endless stream of compliments and praise for the syrup that our trees provided. I heard about people’s breakfasts and the cocktails they’d made with it, stories from their childhood growing up on farms like the one I describe and wishes for a great year ahead.

I saved every single one of these cards and letters in a big basket and several times over the year have sat down at the end of a bitter day when nothing went right and read through a handful until I changed my frame of mind and got right with the world again and in every case, it worked. I cannot begin to describe the way such generosity has affected not only myself but our entire family and how it has convinced me that there is far more right with this world than wrong with it. We are indebted and our repayment is the promise to continue to preserve the traditions and the skills of the past for as long as we are able and to share them through these stories for as long as anyone is willing to read them.

I love what we do and there is nothing else I could ever imagine that would bring the kind of deep satisfaction that we find daily in our labor. Like the rock maple, sometimes the hardest things bring the sweetest rewards and in life, nothing is more certain. I wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you, once again to everyone who sent their best wishes and help us to make this year possible and to let everyone know that the 2017 vintage of Hopewell Farms maple syrup is available again if there is still an interest.

Please contact me either by phone or email @ (603) 938-2043 or [email protected] and we’ll box up your order as soon as the last pint is boiled.

And if you want a reminder of where it comes from and what it takes I am reposting an essay I wrote the very first year we made it.

Enjoy!

https://hardscrabblefarmer.com/2010/03/09/sugaring/

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