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We love maple candy. We love making it, we love teaching other people to make it, we love sharing it and selling it, and oh yeah, we love eating it. But maple candy is tricky. It is best eaten fresh. Small batches of maple candy actually use a lot of maple syrup - it gets more efficient as you start to do larger batches. And maple candy and heavy jugs of maple syrup aren't great shipping partners, it works best to ship maple candy on its own. So.... we're going to start doing flash sales! Keep an eye out on...

It took a while this year, but spring is finally here. The early flowers are popping up, the apple trees have buds, and the kids are running around looking for bits of color and green after months of snow.  Although the winters are hard, nothing has ever seemed as refreshing as the green spring and the warm sun. We are pulling taps, watching for the first calves, and enjoying the flowers. We had our first spring storm and watched lightening instead of snowfall. Hello spring.

Wood is something we think about a lot. Drag the wood. Split the wood. Stack the wood. Burn the wood. Taste the wood. Because we think we can, we think we can taste a difference between wood-fired maple syrup and oil fired maple syrup. It takes a lot of extra work and planning. So even as the snow melts, the trees are thinking about budding, and we are thinking we might only have one or two more days to boil.... we are thinking about next season's firewood.  

I grew up reading Laura Ingalls Wilder books, and LOVING the part about sugar snow, and the sugaring-off party. It seemed nothing less than magical.  While sugaring today is very different than it was in Laura's time, the magical moments are still there. Sugar on snow is one of those. The maple syrup is heated up to just the right temperature and poured over pans of fresh snow to turn into a taffy-like candy. Served with pickles (to cut the sweet), and donuts (to cut the pickles?), this is a truly magical spring treat.  Come visit us some spring, and...

I don't know if everyone else has a strong flour preference, but here on Stannard Farm we love King Arthur Flour. This company is 100% employee owned, and based in Norwich Vermont. If you are a baker who loves maple syrup you must pick up their cookbook (here you go!), they do a great job with maple substitutions in a lot of the recipes. In addition to recipes and flour and other goodies is this lovely:  a cake mix made with Vermont maple sugar. Yum! Once upon a time I might have said all cakes should be made from scratch....