Each year, as the long, cold, winter days prepare to make way for the warmth of spring, sugarmakers across the Northeast are busily getting ready for the much-anticipated maple season.

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In January, the Dutch Hill Maple family begins tapping their forest of 9,000+ maple trees. They move through the often snow-covered woods, drilling a 1.5” hole into each tree before tapping in a spile (also called a spout).

 

When Mother Nature begins to treat us to the ideal maple weather of “warm days and cool nights,” the sap begins to flow in what’s known as “maple season”.

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Traveling through a network of tubing, connecting all of the trees in the sugarbush, the sap rushes to it’s final destination: the sugarhouse.