Our tours are free, yes FREE. They last about an hour and are a lot of fun. There will be time either before or after the tour to ask questions and see us fill the fire. You don’t need to call ahead and no reservations are required. Just show up and be ready to experience what is the first crop of the MA growing season. So bring your friends and bring your family. It is a great way to learn a little and taste a little.

Our address is 25 Turtle Lane in  North Andover, MA. Parking is on the street, but please be respectful of our neighbors (don’t park in front of driveways or mailboxes). We open the sugarhouse around 9am and go to about 4pm or so, on both Saturdays and Sundays during March.

You can also find us at: http://www.facebook.com/turtlelanemaplefarm

You can also find us on twitter at: twitter.com/turtlelanemaple

We are always looking for friends and followers so please spread the word!

Have a great spring weekend!!   ~ Farmer Paul and Farmer Kathy

But despite the press that we are not tapping this year, and that we will not produce a drop of syrup this year…  let us be clear… WE ARE STILL DOING FREE EDUCATIONAL TOURS!!

Just as always, every Saturday and Sunday during the month of March, Farmer Paul and Farmer Kathy open up their sugarhouse to the community to learn all things maple.  We start with the history of maple including the discovery and impacts on families up through the industrial revolution.  We then talk about the trees, how the sap flows, what makes a good flow day and why.  We cover the history of tapping and collection and how we do it today.  We cover how the sap comes into the sugarhouse and makes it way to the evaporator.  We cover extensively what happens in the evaporator with all the math and science.  We then go over filtration, bottling and grading.  We end with a primer on confections including making maple cream, maple candy and maple sugar.

Throughout the tour we give samples of maple sap from out of the tree, mid-boil (partially done syrup), finished syrup, maple cream, maple candy, maple sugar and more.  The tours are great for all ages and we try hard to keep the attention of the little ones while making it interesting for the grown-ups.  The tours are light-hearted with lots of bad jokes and banter by Farmer Paul and Farmer Kathy.  Oh and did we mention that they were FREE!

Tours start at 9:00am and run about every 90 minutes, so roughly 10:30am, Noon, 1:30pm and 3:00pm.  Show up anytime and if you miss the beginning of the current tour, no problem, go through the tour and then catch what you missed on the next tour.

When you arrive, park on the street.  Please be respectful of our neighbors and don’t park in front of driveways or mailboxes.  And please remember we are are opening up our home, so treat it as you would your own.

The maple trees we love didn’t get their well deserved rest. They didn’t go into their winter slumber that usually happens as New England slips into its long deep freeze.  The ground never froze and we only had a few daytime temps in the 20s. This means the sugar reserves in the tree didn’t build up, which is proved out as we have done numerous tests on trees in our area.  Typically at the end of February just before tapping, we would see the likes of 3.5% to 4.0% sugar in the sap.  But now we are only seeing 1%. Using the “Rule of 86″ that means that rather than needing just over 21gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup (86/4=21.5) at the beginning of the season, we are starting out with needing 86 gallons of sap to make that same gallon of syrup (86/1=86). And it only goes downhill from there as the season progresses. The earliest we ever set taps was February 27, and that was in 2008.  But there are many producers today that are already 2 or 3 weeks into this strange season.  It feels odd that we are near the end, when we shouldn’t have even started yet.

So with all of this, Kathy and I had to make a hard decision.  With all of the labor and costs and preparation it takes to setup lines through the woods, tap trees, collect through the season, clean up the lines after season and take them down and store them… it just wasn’t worth all of that for 100 gallons to 1.  So this year, 2012, for the first time ever we are doing the unthinkable… we are not tapping trees.  There will be no 2012 syrup production.

But that is where the bad news ends, so keep reading…

During our thought process, we did consider not opening the doors at all, but it just didn’t seem right to break all traditions. So we are going to do tours, we are going to teach, we are going to do samples and we ARE GOING TO HAVE FUN!!

You may be asking yourself how we can do tours without sap. Well, we hate to think we have to do this but in the vein of full disclosure, we are going to boil water in the back pan (sap pan) of the evaporator and we will boil sap in the front pan (syrup pan).  Sap? What sap? Well, if you think about how we get to syrup by taking the water out, we get to sap the exact opposite way.  By doing this, when you walk into the sugar house you will get the same steamy sweet smell to refresh your senses.  And we will still be able to do all the math and science.

Our tours will be the same as always. Roughly 50-75 minutes depending on crowd participation and how much enthusiasm I can drag out of you. We will cover the history of maple, importance of agriculture, the role sap plays in the tree, tapping, tubing and collection, evaporation and all the math/science around that, finishing, filtering, bottling. And then a primer on making maple cream, candy and sugar. And in case you were getting nervous, we will still do 7 samples along the way.

Our tour times will be a little more structured this year. We will do tours every Saturday and Sunday during the month of March. Tours will begin at 9:00am and run every 90 minutes. So to be clear; 9:00am, 10:30am, Noon, 1:30pm, 3:00pm. If you get there a little late for one tour, no problem, just jump onto the one going and then catch the part you missed at the beginning of the next tour.

As far as product, we have everything. Maple syrup in all grades, maple cream, maple candy and maple sugar. Thanks to the great yield we had in 2008, we are still able to satisfy our customers with all the sweet goodness.

We wish the winter had been different but lets make lemonade out of lemons. We are very excited to see all the regulars and a bunch of new faces this year. We will still have all the old jokes, but I will try hard to come up with a new one. And we want to thank everyone for supporting local agriculture.

We were contacted by Edible Boston magazine, and they’ll be doing an article on us in their next issue – so very exciting!  The content for the article is about done, and we’re preparing for a photo shoot in the sugar house next weekend.  We’re honored to have been chosen for this article, and look forward to seeing the final publication.

We just started putting together a calendar to start scheduling tours for this year – have 4 inquirires already, and surely many more will be coming in.  We need to contact the schools and start scheduling the North Andover 3rd graders for their annual field trip. 

Have also been trying to update the web site – many pages are terribly out of date.  I’m having particular difficulty with the group tour page – one of the most important pages on the site.  For some reason it won’t publish the new content I’ve typed, which is very frustrating.  I really could use some web site development training…some other day though – just too much going on right now!

Really looking forward to the upcoming months with anticipation – hope to see you all at the sugar house in March!

On Saturday Paul’s dad, Buster, came out with us in the field. Paul’s mom, Maxine, stayed at the house for two hours and played with the kids. During the two hours, the three of us were able to run a fair amount of new mainline. We took a different path this year deeper in the woods which allowed us to pick up an additional 44 taps in a small sugar maple grove on the Southern portion of the estate and just West of the tote road. Interestingly, the beginning of this run comes within feet of the beginning of the Cullen Estate run, because each run starts at the top of a hill and run down each side respectively. We started with running 12 gauge high-tensile wire strung a long distance between two trees. The wire is tightened by using gripples and inline strainers at each end of the wire. When we say the wire is tight, we mean the wire twangs like a guitar string when you hit it. It must be in order to hold all the weight of the 1/2″ mainline pipe filled with maple sap, and not sag or loose its pitch (2 to 3 degree down sloping angle).

On Sunday we went back out to Steven’s Estate for a couple hours, to begin to tie in trees at the beginning of the mainline to the manifolds on the mainline. This is done through the use of “lateral lines”. These smaller (5/16″) lines string through the woods from tree to tree making their way down hill till they reach the 1/2″ mainline. Think of these as roads to a highway. At some point we will be putting a more descriptive overview of the tubing process on the website. With some trees that are somewhat below the topology of the mainline, we needed to use a 6′ step-ladder and string latteral lines higher up the trunk so that the line still runs down towards the mainline at about a 4 to 5 degree pitch. We ran lateral lines to about 12 trees, but did not tap.

Since Monday was a holiday, we took the opportunity to go out again despite the rain. Yes, even when it is miserable out, we go out and work because it won’t get done otherwise. Luckily, it was a light rain so it wasn’t so bad to work in. We finished running the lateral lines through the woods. We also ran a length of mainline through the grove of sugar maples on the back lawn to the tank area of the other mainline run. Unfortunately we ran out of daylight, so we have about an hour or so worth of work in order to finish the lateral lines in the small grove area.

At Steven’s Estate there are also three separate trees that won’t be connected to mainline due to their location. So they will have a 5 gallon bucket or small tote next to the tree to collect the sap. We will install these when we tap as these are easy to do.

We not ready to tap yet as it is too early in the season, but running the lines before hand really helps spread out the work.  And at this point you can probably begin to appreciate how much work there is to do.  Remember, this is just 116 out of 500+ taps!

The run on the left as you go up the hill has 10 trees (some Silver Maple but most Sugar Maple), all having 4 taps each. There is some wind damage on two of the trees, but the crowns are full and so we will focus on the parts of the tree that are unaffected vertically to the healthy parts of the crown.

The run on the right as you go up the hill as 8 trees (again some Silver Maple but mostly Sugar Maple), all having 4 taps each.

Again, we haven’t tapped but just running the lines in advance.

And just as a matter of opinion, to counter the treachery of snow, wind and cold, we have to say that this area is some of the most beautiful in North Andover. We suggest that the community go and explore these areas and experience some of nature’s best in your own backyard.

We not ready to tap yet as it is too early in the season, but running the lines before hand really helps spread out the work.