Greetings!  So what have we been up to?  Memorial Day week we took a week off to Grand Manan Island  an hour and a half off the coast of New Brunswick.  A very interesting, friendly and quiet island (tourist season doesn’t start until July).  They pretty much live by the sea.  Lobster, salmon, scallops, herring and even sea weed.

Since then Brian has dedicated a serious portion of each week to wood preparation for next season.  Needing 12 – 15 cord that has to be dry means you can’t dilly-dally.  And the evaporator got it’s scrub down too so it’s already for next year.

It’s now the Summer Farmers Market season again.  As posted before we will be at the Derry NH market again every Wednesday from 3-7 pm starting July 6th.  But we are also going to be at the market in Newburyport MA every other Sunday morning from 9 am to 1 pm. This is a great market offering lots of great specialty products along with plenty of super fresh produce.  There is a baker, local honey, flavored organic butters, homegrown pork, beef and lamb, NH wine and much more.  It’s just past downtown on the right in the Tannery parking lot as you’d head out towards Plum Island Reservation.  Our next few dates are July 10th, July 24th and Aug. 7th.  If you aren’t familiar with Newburyport it’s a great place to take a ride to.  Lots of shops and restaurants, antique shops and assorted sightseeing boat trips and of course the beach at Plum Island.  Great fishing too if the stripers are in.

It seems like forever since I last posted what’s up.  Easter weekend we finally got wrapped up most of the loose ends for this year.  Just the evaporator needs cleaning and that’s best done in warmer weather.  The Farmer’s markets are gearing up.  Some with Spring sessions and some not until summer.

Once again we signed up to do the Derry Market every Wednesday starting July 6th and ending September 28th at 1 West Broadway from 3 – 7 pm. We’ll do a few in Salem too – May 12th, June 19th, July 17th and August 14th.  Those are held at Lake St. Garden Center on Lake St. in Salem on Sunday’s from 1-5 pm.

Brian just stopped back in from collecting and the sap is still looking great.  Some trees have stopped running for the year but many are still running well.  These cooler days are important to give us a bit more season.  If it jumps into the 50s again the season could end in a day.  The trees would change all that lovely sweet sugar to starch for the buds and that would be that.

We also just finished packing up some Grade B Syrup from last weekends boiling so we’ll have that on the shelves this weekend too.

We had the best run of the season so far Sunday so we were able to make a fair amount of syrup Sunday and Monday.  Looking for more before the week is out if all goes well.

Some of you may have heard there are places in the western part of the state with serious ice damage that is raising havoc with the sugaring operations.  Hopefully they can all get cleaned up and not suffer any more set backs.

Don’t forget to spring ahead on Saturday night.  This is always great for sugaring because the extra daylight at the end of the day means you can collect later if there is lots of sap.

Hours: Sat 3/12/11    11 am to 5 pm

Sun 3/13/11   11 am to 5 pm