This March, Hilltown Land Trust (HLT) came together with the J.S. Bryant School and High Five Books at Two Mamas Farm, home of HLT’s conserved Waterfall Trail, in Cummington for a Maple Tour and Tasting event. To celebrate the last days of winter, we joined farmer Pepper at her sugarbush and small-scale sustainable maple farm for a queer-inclusive and family friendly event. Farmer Pepper started the queer-run maple farm back in 2009 and since then, the farm has become a touching stone for the surrounding community. To celebrate nearly fifteen years of maple tapping and to bring together folks out on the land, HLT helped throw a maple event with a community potluck, a campfire, maple tastings, and tours of the sugarbush.
Thanks to our partners, we attracted over eighty people from all over including Central Mass to Connecticut to Hudson Valley and even from southern Vermont. Our crowd consisted of more than our usual Berkshire to the Connecticut River demographic and highlighted the much-needed gap in queer-inclusive events that are rooted in the land. Families who traveled far and wide for the event, joined bearing food for the potluck and with enthusiasm to meet other families. Folks gathered around the campfire, drinking warm cups of coffee and snacking on sweet maple meringues. While parents shmoozed, kids flocked to the sensory play space in the evaporation barn where the High Five Books team greeted them with kid programming including maple games, books, and more.
Outside the barn, families had the opportunity to indulge in the farm’s delicious maple syrup with an educational demonstration and tasting of the four grades of maple syrup. Tastings could try each syrup from the light and delicate golden maple syrup to the deepest very dark maple syrup grade. Each syrup differs in color and depth of tasting, correlating to when the sap was tapped. The fan favorite amber syrup, great on pancakes and rich in flavor, is the second lightest syrup and made from sap tapped in the middle of the season. The very dark syrup is the darkest in color and has a strong taste which is excellent for cooking. After trying each syrup, many tasters strolled down to the end of the dirt farm road to buy a bottle of Two Mamas Farm delicious syrup purchased in maple leaf glass bottles with rainbow pride ribbons.
With the maple games, books, and syrup tastings, kids were sugared up and excited to join their parents on a tour of the sugarbush and maple lines with farmer Pepper. Tours leaving every fifteen minutes as families and friends arrived began outside the evaporation barn. There, farmer Pepper demonstrated tapping a tree and inserting a line, showing the groups how to get the sap flowing and collecting the clear fresh smelling sap that turns into rich syrup. On the tour, participants learned about the small-scale bird habitat friendly tapping. Tours followed the lines strung up along the sugarbush, all leading to the electric pump which collects sap and pumps gallons into the stainless-steel vat. Farmer Pepper told the crowd that the already quarter full vat had been emptied just that morning.
This year, due to the constantly warming climate and oscillations in above freezing temperatures, sap collecting is slow, and the sugar content is lower than ever. As sugar maples are struggling to adapt to climate change, other maple varieties like red maples are becoming more resilient and have matching and even higher sugar content in their sap. Small scale maple farms may shift to tapping both varieties as they adapt to climate change. In slower sap seasons, farms like Two Mamas Farms look towards selling their sap to larger farms instead of boiling down their own. The tours and tastings where a great reminder of the dynamic conditions farms are navigating, especially as we gathered on a sunny and warm late March day after a mild winter.
As we shmoozed, ate, and talked around the fire with children’s shouts and laughter lofting around us, we were reminded of the importance of gathering on the land and helping take care of the places and traditions we love in a changing climate.
