Creekside Farm Maple

06/05/2026

The annual Blue Mountain & District Volunteer Fire Department Fishing Derby is Saturday, June 6th at Eden Lake.

We’re happy to support our fire department again this year. Tons of other great prizes up for grabs too!

05/28/2026

The 40 Mile Yard sale is on for this Saturday (May 30) and we’re on the route.

We’ll be around the sugar camp if anyone has maple syrup on their shopping list!

Good luck treasure hunting!

05/23/2026

Like many farming activities, maple production requires us to invest time and resources into a future crop that’s still a long ways off. In the case of evaporator firewood, we calculate how much wood we’ll need based on previous years consumption and planned addition of new taps.

All of this for a crop that is still 8 months away.

“Another seasons promise” we call it.

Today, we’ll show you what’s involved in firewood processing!

05/18/2026

When Creekside Farm Maple was in the dreaming & planning stages, we had no idea of what “support local” would look like. We thought we’d tap our sugar maples, make maple syrup “and sell it”, not really knowing what our market might be.

We’d build a roadside sugar camp, invite folks in to experience the process and we figured if we did that right, the maple syrup would sell itself.

Seven seasons in, we now know what support local looks like. When customers - near and far - return each year for our maple products, we take that to be our greatest compliment.

To all of our customers - from those who have been with us since the start to those who just discovered us this year, we offer a heartfelt thanks. We really feel like we’ve become friends and enjoy having you visit the sugar camp during the season or catching up on our porch steps in the off season. We are honoured to be your supplier of maple products.

Production wise, the season was a success! 2026 was our best yield to date. We are well stocked with maple syrup, maple butter and maple cream.

Finally, we are blessed to have the support of Brent, Jillian and Millie. Thanks for all the time you give us throughout the season. Your help is greatly appreciated.

With much gratitude,
Nancy & Darren
& Chester too!

📸 subtletiesofnature

05/07/2026

Another post-maple season chore done! The spiles are all pulled from the sugar maples.

04/26/2026

🕰️ Check out the new evening hours at Small Holdings Farm! 🕰️

Congratulations Keltie, Michael, Fergus and the rest of the farm team! 10 years!!!

Looking forward to working with you all again this year!

We're Keltie and Michael of Small Holdings Farm, and this is our 10th season!

🎉🎉🎉

We grow vegetables, herbs, cut flowers and, in the spring, seedlings for your home garden.

And we sell right here from our farm having converted a historic barn into a farm store. We are open Thursdays (2pm-7pm) and Fridays (2pm-5pm) June through October.

I grew up in Cape Breton while Michael spent most of his childhood in Halifax. On a first date, Michael brought me corn from his backyard garden. We farmed our first season together in 2015, running a small CSA to friends and family in Halifax while working our city jobs part-time. We farmed in West Hants County then, on the land of a mentor farmer of ours.

Living in Pictou County is a pleasure and I am so grateful that we landed here! Our visit to what we now call Small Holdings Farm was during the summer drought of 2016. Michael and I ventured into the woods just past the farm fields, crossing a flowing spring-fed brook. We found ourselves in a sun shower and felt the magic of this spot.

We love farming — as well as cooking, eating, reading, music, the outdoors and much more. Michael plays the guitar and the banjo and is a great singer. Thanks to his musical talents, we get to enjoy a fair bit of jamming’ with friends.

Perhaps most of all, we love community. We love growing food for others, working the farm as part of a team, sharing meals, music and conversation. Our two year son, Fergus, loves these things too.

04/23/2026

🍁 Sap Update for Thursday, April 23 🍁

Our maple season has come to an end.

We waited Mother Nature out like we said we would last weekend. We were optimistic that the textbook sap weather these past few days would bring good sap runs. The good runs came, but the sap has changed as it always does at this point in the season. It wouldn’t make the quality maple syrup we’d be proud to put our name on, so we pulled the drain plug in the sap tank and called it done.

One of the first tasks to do after this bittersweet moment is to head to the woods. A quiet walk amongst the sugar maples to thank them for another great season of giving is something we feel is an important part of sugarin’ time.

It has been a great season. More on that in the days to come.

Thank you all for making it a success!

04/18/2026

🍁 Sap Update for Saturday, April 18 🍁

We won’t be boiling this weekend.

We will be working around the sugar camp all weekend and are well stocked with maple syrup, maple butter and maple cream. Visitors always welcome!

Are we all done boiling for the season? We’re not sure. There hasn’t been a freeze up all week but there are some cold nights in the forecast midweek. The maple syrup we made this week has to be some of the best tasting late season syrup we’ve ever made and it didn’t have the typical end of season characteristics.

We’ll hold off on clean up and see what happens in the coming week. Only Mother Nature knows for sure. We’ll wait her out and see what happens.

04/12/2026

🍁 Sap Update for Sunday, April 12 🍁

We will boil this afternoon! The evaporator will be going by 2pm and we’ll boil until supper time.

Visitors always welcome!

04/11/2026

🍁 Sap Update for Saturday, April 11 🍁

We will boil this afternoon! The evaporator will be going by 1pm and we’ll boil until supper time.

Now that the snow has melted away from the evaporator wood that is piled in the sugar camp yard, we have been using this wood and saving the stuff that’s left inside the shed for a rainy day.

Chester is ready to haul another load around to the front door to be loaded onto the wood cart!