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Taffy Morgan organized a field trip for campers who wanted to visit a local maple syrup farm, both to see how the syrup is produced as well as to purchase really high quality maple syrup to take home. Susie and I joined the group going to Dave Matt’s sugar shack on Thursday evening after dinner at camp.
We caravanned behind Taffy’s truck to the sugar farm. Dave Matt met us there to give us a talk about sugar farming and also to show us the operation in the sugar shack. The Matts have been running the maple syrup operation on the farm since 1979. They are tapping around 1800 trees to produce their syrup, which in maple syrup terms is a small operation.
Since the advent of inexpensive tubing, the trees are tapped and connected to the sugar house with a network of tubing that gathers the sap from the trees and sends it down into larger tubes that deliver the liquid to the sugar house for processing. After our visit I became aware of the many tubes I had seen on several of the back roads that obviously were part of maple sap collection for the farms in the area.
Of course the task of tapping 1800 trees every year is a big job, but at least caring buckets to a bigger receptacle is no longer needed. Dave said that they tap the trees a foot above or below and a foot to the side of the last tapping to prevent injury to the tree. It is always good to see this kind of green technology that preserves such a valuable resource.
Dave states on his website that: “After the sap is collected in the sugarhouse, it is boiled down in our wood fired evaporator until it becomes maple syrup. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make a single gallon of syrup. When our evaporator is boiling well it can boil off about 300 gallons of sap per hour, which means that we can make about 7.5 gallons of syrup every hour.”
After this process the syrup is run through a filtering process to remove impurities and then canned or bottled for sale. Dave told us that the varying grades of syrup come from the time in the season run that they are processed. The earliest sap produces Grade A Fancy syrup which Dave believes has the truest maple flavor. The Grade A Medium Amber and Dark Amber follow next, then the Grade B syrup that is recommended for cooking.
The variations are caused by bacteria that form in the lines, which although removed in the creation of the syrup, still alter the final flavor.
Dave’s syrup has received the Vermont Seal of Quality from the state of Vermont because of the high standards practiced on the farm and in the sugar house.
After the tour we were able to taste the different grades of Grade A syrup to select the flavor we liked best. Dave’s syrup is the finest maple syrup that I have ever tasted. We then bought several bottles of syrup.
On Friday I called Dave and met him at his house where I spent some time talking and visiting and bought a bunch of small jugs of syrup to give as gifts back home. Dave shared with me his emphasis on quality and that he would never compromise quality in favor of quantity. Dave is one of the small business owners in this country that we desperately need going into the future.
The good news is that Dave will ship maple syrup when I need more, if I am unable to return next year. If you want to buy great maple syrup, contact Dave at his website below.
Website: http://www.mattsmaplesyrup.com
Rating:(based on syrup quality) 
July 9, 2023
