Most of Us Sugar Makers Also Garden
Several years ago, we surveyed our customers to find out what other leisure activities they did besides making maple syrup. We were delighted to discover that, just like us, most of our customers garden, hike and cook for fun. The most commonly listed leisure activity, in fact, was gardening. Other outdoor endeavors in the top ten included camping, fishing and snow sports. Good to know!
Sugar Makers Are More Likely to Garden than the Average American
Us sugar makers are even more likely to garden than others, in fact. Whereas 55% of American households garden, 72% of our customers do.
That makes sense, right? If you are going to make maple syrup, you like to be outside, you appreciate homemade food, and you are willing to put work and time into producing it. But it also got us thinking . . . while most of sugar makers garden, most gardeners probably don’t make maple syrup. What a shame! They’re missing out on so much! How can we change that? Can we make the case that anyone who can garden can make maple syrup? In what ways are gardening and sugaring similar enough to make out the argument?
Gardening and Sugaring Require Basic Tools and Skills
It’s certainly true that both gardening and sugaring require only basic tools and the skills to use them. Gardeners with the smallest patches may only require gloves, a hand trowel and some seeds or plants. Bigger gardening endeavors may require things like shears, loppers, a shovel, a rake and a hoe or the like. Nothing that’s hard to find, and nothing that’s hard to use on those lists . . .
That’s not dissimilar to sugaring! The smallest of maple syrup makers need a drill, a drill bit, a spile, and something to collect sap in. The rest (heat and a vessel) can be found in any kitchen. Other than the spile, which is easy enough to find online, nothing you probably don’t already own is on that list. Bigger maple syrup hobbies will include lines, larger sap storage containers, an evaporator and maybe even a reverse osmosis machine. But none of it is brain surgery; at a small scale, this is all simple stuff!
Gardening and Sugaring Can Be Done on Similar Budgets
According to the National Gardening Association, the average American household that gardens spent between $400 and $500 on their gardens in 2024. That’s the same ballpark as the average order value on our website for that period of time! That tells us that gardening and sugaring are of the same value to people and can be done on similar budgets.
Gardening and Sugaring Require Similar Time Committments
A typical sugaring season can range from one to eight weeks depending on where you live. The length of the growing season is longer and can be year-round in certain climates.
Whereas people spend an average of 5 hours per week tending to their gardens over the course of a multi-month season, however, the time committment of sugaring is a bit more intense. Nevertheless, if you figure that people spend 5 hours per week in a 17 week growing season (the average in northern US) that’s 85 hours, which is more than enough time to make a few gallons of maple syrup.
All You Need is a Bit of Dirt or a Tree and You Can Garden or Sugar
In conclusion, we do think that the argument is there. Gardening and sugaring can both be done with simple tools and skills, on a reasonable budget and with the same kind of time committment. All it takes is a patch of dirt or access to one maple tree. So, yes! If you can garden, you can sugar! Hooray!