Fleurys Maple Hill Farm

05/10/2026

We don’t harvest our sugarhouse firewood from our sugarbush, since all the permanent sap tubing makes it very difficult to cut down trees and drag out logs from there. Instead, we buy logs to cut up and use for boiling. But, when we had a load of logs delivered in February, they ended up blocking the access to our stacks of seasoned firewood. We wanted to start moving the wood over to the sugarhouse, but before we could do that, Steve needed to cut up and move some of those logs. So yesterday, he did that.

05/09/2026

We sell our bulk syrup to the Franklin County Maple Producer’s Cooperative, which is a very simple and profitable way for us to market it. The Co-op was developed 60 years ago, and Steve’s dad, Daton, was one of the founding members. The mission of the Co-op is to help its members market their bulk syrup, which is very useful for its members, especially the smaller sugarmakers like us. All the syrup that Co-op buys is resold to Butternut Mountain Farm, a large maple producer, packager, and distributor in Morrisville, VT. During sugaring, we take samples from each bulk barrel as we fill them, and we send the samples to Butternut Mountain at the end of the season for them to taste and grade. Then we bring our barrels of syrup directly to Butternut Mountain on scheduled “take-in” days. Yesterday, we delivered our syrup there. Since they had already graded our samples, all they had to do was unload the barrels from our truck and weigh them. Then we got paid right away based on each barrel’s grade and weight. It was quick and easy. After dropping off our syrup, we went out to eat, to celebrate the end of a successful sugaring season!

05/08/2026

Yesterday, we loaded our bulk syrup barrels into our truck, to get ready to deliver them. We have 6 barrels to sell this year, which we can fit into our truck bed, but first Steve needed to take off its cap. Years ago, he made pallet forks out of two long boards for just this purpose. After unbolting the truck cap, Steve bolted the wooden forks to our tractor’s bucket and used them to lift it off and set it aside. Then he removed the forks from the tractor bucket and attached a chain and barrel lifter to it. The two arms of the barrel lifter will grab and hold the rim of the barrels when the chain is pulled tight by the tractor bucket. Syrup weighs 11 pounds per gallon, so our 40-gallon stainless steel barrels weigh about 500 pounds each when full. The barrel lifter helped Steve handle all that weight, so he was able to easily and safely lift and load the barrels into our truck. We are delivering the syrup today.

05/02/2026

Yesterday, Steve made up a batch of maple cream. Our maple cream is made from just one ingredient – our maple syrup! Although the name says “cream”, there are no dairy products in it. The word “cream” just references its smooth, creamy consistency. In the morning, Steve poured a gallon of our syrup into a stainless steel pot and quickly heated up the syrup, without stirring it, to 232.5 degrees. (Most maple cream recipes call for the syrup to be heated to 235 degrees, but Steve found that 232.5 degrees works best for us. The temperature needed seems to be based on elevation, the way the boiling point of syrup is during sugaring.) Then he immediately took the pan off the heat and sprinkled a little bit of cold water across the top of the syrup. This action helps prevent sugar crystals from forming, which would make the texture grainy. After that, he set the syrup aside to allow it to cool to room temperature (70 degrees). In the afternoon, he poured the syrup into our cream machine. The machine stirs the syrup by circulating it through the funnel and pipes until the proper consistency is produced. He has to monitor it constantly, since the syrup can turn to cream within 5 minutes. Then he set the cream jars on a scale and filled them by opening up the draw-off valve, weighing the jars as he filled them until he got to the precise 1 pound weight. We can get 7.5 pounds of maple cream out of 1 gallon (11 pounds) of syrup.

05/01/2026

Steve has canned up another two barrels of our retail syrup. To jug our syrup, he puts 15 gallons (1 barrel) of syrup into our stainless steel canning pan and heats the syrup up to 180 degrees on top of the kitchen’s large old-fashioned combination propane/wood stove. He then draws it off into pre-printed plastic jugs, which we buy from the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association. Then he lays the jugs on their sides for a few minutes so the hot syrup activates the heat-seals in the cap liners, creating a vacuum seal on the jugs, which helps prevent spoilage from yeasts and molds. Finally, once the jugs have cooled, he labels them. All sugarmakers that sell their syrup in retail jugs are required by Vermont law to put labels on the jugs showing the syrup’s grade and the sugarmaker’s name and address. So we apply the correct grade label to the cap. (We grade each 15 barrel we make during sugaring so we know what label to apply to the jugs when we can it.) We apply our address label on the backside of the jug. And, since we are a certified Audubon Bird-Friendly Maple Sugarbush, we also apply their label to the front of the jug. We also write a batch code on the bottom of the jug showing the date the jugs were filled, which provides traceability back to the syrup’s boiling date and barrel number.

04/30/2026

We saw a lot of RO’s during the Maple Festival and noticed that they come in all different shapes, sizes, and capacities. For my followers that don’t have a sugaring background, maybe I should explain what an RO is and does. A Reverse Osmosis (RO) removes a large portion of the water from raw sap, concentrating the sugar content in the sap before it is boiled. The raw sap can be concentrated from about 2% sugar to any level up to about 35%. RO’s work by high-pressure pumps which force the sap through semi-permeable membranes, allowing water to pass through while trapping the sugar molecules and minerals into a concentrate. The removed water is called the permeate and it is often saved to wash equipment, while the high sugar concentrate can then be boiled in the evaporator. This process greatly reduces boiling time and fuel consumption, which can dramatically increase boiling efficiency. However, RO’s require electricity to work and also need to be operated in a warm, heated environment. We can’t use one, since we don’t have electricity at our sugarhouse. Besides, we prefer to boil raw sap in the traditional manner, even if it does take us longer to do it. So, we weren’t very interested in the RO’s we saw displayed during the Maple Festival, although I did snap some photos to post here on Facebook.

04/29/2026

Monday was a beautiful day, sunny and warm, so Steve filled our gathering tank with water and used it to clean our sap buyer’s two tanks and our collection tank. He also took down our receivers and cleaned them as well. So, our sugaring season is completely over now. Although we only collected sap from March 4th to April 8th, a length of 38 days, the work of the sugaring season isn’t just while the sap is running. It starts from the first day of tapping the trees until the last day of cleaning up. This year our season went from January 10th to April 27th, a length of 108 days. And, of course, there is still plenty of work to be done in our sugarbush outside of the sugaring season. So, running our sugarbush takes up a lot of our time!

04/28/2026

After taking two days off to relax and enjoy the Maple Festival, Steve finished the job of pulling taps by taking out the 330 spouts in our Little Woods on Sunday. He loves photographing flowers, so he took photos of the ones that were in bloom in the sugarwoods while he was there.

04/27/2026

While at the Maple Festival on Saturday, we watched the Aim High Canines dog show entitled “Reach for the Stars”. It was wonderful! The dogs performed high-flying frisbee catches and many other stunts. Aim High Canines was founded in 2015 by Haeleigh Hyatt and since then she has performed in fairs, festivals, and events across the country. The dogs live with her and she trains all of the dogs using positive reinforcement methods. Watching the show, you could feel the love she has for her dogs and the dogs have for her by the joy and energy that the dogs showed as they played with her. We go to watch her show every year that they are the Festival.

04/26/2026