Visiting the Couture Maple Farm during Maple Sugaring Season! - 2025/03/30

Today we're in for an extra special treat! We are in Vermont during the maple sugaring season! And even better, we're with our friends, Jake and Pauline Couture! 

How we met them is an interesting story. Way back in 2021, in our first year of full-time RVing, I was still very new to driving the truck and RV and was having a hard time backing into our site since the way was lined with trees. Jake came and asked if we'd like help and I gladly took it. To say thank you, I baked them a rustic loaf of bread and took it over to them. Turns out they were celebrating their 52nd wedding anniversary and the bread would go great with the ribeyes they were cooking for dinner to celebrate. From there we just started talking and they asked the kids if they've ever had real maple syrup, then brought out a jug to sample it. Turns out, they're maple syrup farmers, along with dairy farmers, and they've got a place a few hours north. They invited us to come visit them and see how it all works! 

Well, it was September and the maple sap wouldn't be flowing, but we took them up on that offer and drove up later that week! We kept in touch over the years and when our travels brought us back out that way in 2024, we stayed with them again, this time in August. "But you've got to come back when it's sugaring season," said Jake. "The air smells amazing." 

And so, Theresa and I made it a point to clear our calendar around the end of March when the maple sap should be flowing well. Let's go on another adventure! 

It was so early leaving Florida. At 6:15am we were already parked and on the shuttle to the airport. It's going to be a long day. Florida is warm and we've been walking around in shorts and t-shirts. 

By 11:15am, our plane landed in Hartford Connecticut and we were on our way. 

Welcome to Connecticut! 

We picked up the rental car, thankfully a Toyota Camry that got 45 mpg, grabbed some food and started our drive north.  

We've got a good 4 hours of driving ahead of us, and as we're driving it's just getting colder and colder. 

There was a light drizzle of rain as we started. 

Which turned into flurries as we got closer! 

I always appreciate punctuality and being on time. For traveling all the way from Florida and driving over 250 miles, I was impressed that we arrived precisely on the exact minute that we said we would. 

5pm exactly as we parked the car. 

And it sure didn't take long before Ian had a snowball headed my way. He might claim that I threw one at him first but that's just going to be my word against his. 

Along with the Maple Farm, for the past 20 years, Pauline has been running a Bed and Breakfast. And we're going to be staying with them! 

Pauline had dinner ready right at 5pm, so we dug right in. Sub sandwiches with either homemade meatballs (which Alli loved, still need that recipe), or homemade roast beef. I'm not ashamed to say that I had one of each and they were both delicious. 

We reserved the family room, which has 4 separate beds. We grabbed everything from the car and unpacked. 

Some places might give you a mint on your pillow, but not here. Here you get a piece of the best maple candy they offer. I love it. 

Speaking of maple, the Coutures have over 8000 trees they tap every year for maple sap. Gone are the days of individual buckets hanging on trees. Today, things are a little more modern. Each tree is drilled into, then a plastic spile and hose is attached. Each tree then connects to a main branch and then feeds via a vacuum pump into the sugar house. From there you boil it to remove the water and then you've got maple syrup! 

But it doesn't have to stop there! There's lots of tasty treats you can make with maple syrup! If you remove even more water, you can make maple peanuts or almonds! Jake has been keeping busy and had a pot of maple syrup on the stove to reduce further. The smell coming from the boiling syrup filled the maple shop and it smelled amazing. 

He walked us through the process of how he makes his maple almonds, doing everything by hand to help reduce the breakage. 

Afterward, we all sat around the table and played a new card game called 7 Diamonds. 

If you can't play, you pick a card from your neighbor, and the game ends when someone runs out of cards. 

Theresa didn't get a good card...

And so, on the next turn, she had to draw Jake's final card, giving him the win. 

It was a fun game to play and we'll have to teach it to our Gram who loves new card games. 

Time to retire to bed. 

Everyone mentioned how well they slept the next morning. The beds are comfy and the thick quilts keep you warm and cozy. 

But it's morning and the smell of bacon is drawing us to the breakfast table. 

Pauline has been hard at work cooking for everyone. 

Berry waffles covered, of course, by their delicious maple syrup. 

And how do you sweeten the coffee? Maple syrup of course! 

Over breakfast we asked Jake how things had been going and he said that the cold weather was a giant boon for the maple sap. 

Maple sap only flows for about 6 weeks out of the entire year! It's the time of year where the nights get below freezing and the days are above freezing. Just a short few weeks between February and April where you have to go hard to collect it all! 

Jake has been up since 3:30am! He's got two separate vacuum systems and his 1500 gallon tank on the truck was empty the night before, and almost full when he checked at 3:30am this morning! He had to drive it to the Sugar House to start boiling it to make room for more! 

And there he is, up on the hillside, with steam coming from the chimney as he boils away. 

It's just above freezing outside, so we jumped in the car to drive up to the sugar house. 

And yes, the air was smelling amazing already. 

But when we enter, you're bombarded by the scent of warm maple syrup. For a maple lover like me, it was amazing. 

Now Jake, or Jacques as he's sometimes called, knows a thing or two about maple syrup. He's been maple sugar farming since 1972. He gets a little help tapping all 8000 trees, but for the most part, he's a one man show when it comes to sugaring season. And I think it's great he's been recognized for it too! Jake and Pauline were voted outstanding Sugar Makers for Vermont in 2014, Maple Person of the Year in 1997, and Jake was previously the President of the Vermont Maple Foundation whose mission it is to promote and protect Vermont's maple syrup. 

Next, Jake walked us through the whole process.

First it goes through all that tubing in the woods, and gets drawn here by a vacuum pump. Those plastic lines are tempting for squirrels and coyotes who like the idea of a slightly sweet treat. If the pressure in the lines goes down, Jake knows he's got to walk through the woods to find the problem. 

The sap from one tree might be just a slow drip, drip, drip, but when you get thousands of them together, the sap can really flow! It comes in waves as it makes it way to the sugar house. If it's really flowing, he can be collecting 1000 gallons an hour! Once it arrives, it gets stored in an 8000 gallon insulated milk truck which has been repurposed to hold maple sap. 

In the old days, it would then get boiled and reduced until the sugar content was high enough. These days though, a technological marvel has inserted itself into the process and really helped reduce the energy it takes to make maple syrup. 

Before the syrup goes to the boiler, it goes through a reverse osmosis filter. This Reverse Osmosis system has filters that lets water through, but not sugar. Using this allows up to 85% of the water from the maple sap to be removed! That's a lot less boiling! 

Next, it goes through a series of boilers which preheats the sap before it goes into the main boiling pan. 

The pan is lined with troughs that only have an opening on opposite ends. Sap comes in on one side then winds and wends its way to the other, reducing in water content all along the way. Once it reaches the other side, Jake checks it with a maple syrup hydrometer. If it's 66% sugar, it's ready to come out! 

During the off season, Jake is in the woods cleaning up the dead and fallen trees. Those trees come back here to the sugar house to run the boiler. Jake was throwing huge logs into the furnace to keep the maple sap boiling. 

Jake - Do you want to try a sample? 

Joe - Could we try some maple sap first? 

Just outside, there's a couple maple trees on a line that Jake has draining into a bucket. 

It looks just like water. 

And it tastes... well I think it tastes like water. I can't really tell that it is sweet. Since it takes anywhere from 40-70 gallons of maple sap to make 1 gallon of syrup, there's a lot of excess water in here. 

Theresa and Ian said they could make out a little sweetness. 

Coming from the boiling pan, the maple syrup goes through special paper filters to separate the Niter. Niter is also known as sugar sand, and is composed of some of the minerals that precipitate out during the boiling process. This sediment can affect the texture of the finished product and needs to be removed before the syrup is ready to store. 

And now we try some fresh maple syrup. This is the really good stuff. 

Jake has been working hard all season and has already filled (35) 40 gallon barrels of finished syrup. And each finished barrel has a small sample taken to hold for later. This gives a record of the type of maple syrup coming out of the trees for the season. The beginning of the season starts with the lighter Delicate syrup with the lightest maple flavor. As the season goes on, the flavor becomes more intense leading to Rich, Robust, and Dark flavors. 

I'm really glad we got to visit during maple sugaring season and get to see the whole process from start to finish. 

This was a fun adventure! 

Now to go eat some of those delicious maple treats!