Chandler Pond Farm Drips into Maple Weekend

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Created on Monday, 01 April 2019 13:25

Written by Emma Quinn

WHEELOCK- Maple sugaring season is now on tap and Chandler Pond Farm opened up to the public for their annual sugaring open house over the weekend. Dahlia Dill co-owner of Chandler Pond says the event is a real community gathering. "People from the community near and far just come and see how syrup is made and hangout with their neighbors."

Kai Pradle a Massachusetts native says, "So we're up from Boston and we've got a cabin up here in Wheelock and we come up here every other weekend and we thought we'd stop by and say hello to our neighbors at the farm and see what they're doing with the maple sugaring."

Neighbors gathered to get a close look at how maple syrup goes from the threes to the bottles. "We saw this beautiful sugaring barn and all the equipment, all the steam and how the maple syrup is boiled down into different levels of density and how they took measurements pf the sugar contents and we saw how much wood it takes and the fire. And it was really impressive" says Pradle.

And although maple season kicked off last weekend Chandler Pond had to post-pone the event due to the snow storm that occurred on Friday, dropping almost 20 inches of snow in the Northeast Kingdom. Dill says, "We had originally scheduled the open house to last weekend and then mother-nature was not cooperating and we had not had any sap run and we had not made any syrup and we had a huge snowstorm. So we last minute canceled and rescheduled to this week."

Looking back on old memories and making new ones is one of the best parts of sharing the maple sugaring experience with others is one of the best parts of it all. "A lot of people reminisce about like the old days when they were a kid or at their grandparents house sugaring. And there's a lot of people who have never seen it done before. So we get a mix of people and everyone enjoys it" says Dill.

Pradle says, "It's great, it's great. Most people don't get to see how the maple sugaring operation works. So it's great to come in and see how they do it."And they'll be tapping it out for many years to come.