by nikkiwhelley | Mar 17, 2025 | DIY Maple Syrup
Making maple syrup was the hard part. Here’s how to turn your homemade maple syrup into maple candy! Search the internet for how to make maple cream, candy and sugar and you will get plenty of hits. But many of these recipes call for starting with a light...
by nikkiwhelley | Mar 10, 2025 | DIY Maple Syrup
You’ve decided to make your own maple syrup this year. You’re either researching if you should filter your final product, or you are boiling as we speak! Either way, you’re figuring out if you should filter your finished syrup. Here is the lowdown on...
by nikkiwhelley | Mar 5, 2025 | DIY Maple Syrup
You’ve tapped your trees, collected your sap, boiled it off, and now it’s time to finish your homemade maple syrup. Here’s how! Making Maple Syrup is Simple Making maple syrup is a simple process that involves removing most of the water from...
by nikkiwhelley | Feb 25, 2025 | Our Company, Products and Customers
The Sapling Evaporator is engineered for maximum DIY maple-syrup efficiency! A while back, a prospective customer named Tom emailed me with the following question: “I love your maple syrup evaporators. But, without being a jerk, why should I spend that much on a...
by nikkiwhelley | Feb 18, 2025 | DIY Maple Syrup
You’re ready to make maple syrup! You’ve tapped your maple trees, collected and stored maple sap. The weekend approaches. It’s time to boil some maple syrup! Here’s how! Making Maple Syrup is Simple Making maple syrup is a simple process that involves...
by nikkiwhelley | Feb 13, 2025 | DIY Maple Syrup
The sap is running and your buckets are filling up! You’ve collected your sap and are ready to store your sap in preparation for your first boil. Read below for some tips and tricks on storing your maple sap for the DIY maple syrup maker! The weather is just...
by nikkiwhelley | Feb 11, 2025 | DIY Maple Syrup, Our Company, Products and Customers
At Vermont Evaporator Company, all our DIY maple syrup equipment features “baffled” or “continuous flow” pans because it makes sugaring more efficient, even in the backyard. But why? You know what a continuous-boil (or continuous-flow) pan is, but do you know why it’s...
by nikkiwhelley | Feb 9, 2025 | DIY Maple Syrup
You’ve decided to make maple syrup this season. You’ve tapped your trees, and the sap is running, and your buckets are filling up! Time for maple sap collection and storing your sap in preparation for your first boil. Tips and tricks on collecting and...
by nikkiwhelley | Feb 6, 2025 | Our Company, Products and Customers
Here at Vermont Evaporator Company, we pride ourselves on selling pans that are made to last, are good quality, and are reasonably priced for the backyard sugarmaker. Buying evaporator pans from Amazon might seem like a cheaper and/or easier option. However, of you...
by nikkiwhelley | Jan 28, 2025 | DIY Maple Syrup
How to set up your DIY Maple Syrup Evaporator, The Sapling. The Sapling Evaporator is a great way to get started making your own maple syrup! We’ve designed this DIY maple syrup evaporator to support 5-50+ taps, perfect for the backyard sugar maker. The Sapling...
by nikkiwhelley | Jan 26, 2025 | Our Company, Products and Customers
Like shiny things? The Sapling Evaporator is a classic, flat black with stainless evaporator pan and accents. Making maple syrup in your backyard has never been this easy OR attractive! You are seriously thinking about buying a Sapling Evaporator, but you have...
by nikkiwhelley | Jan 22, 2025 | About Maple Syrup, Cooking with Maple
Ever hear that Maple Syrup is good for you? Wonder if it’s true? We did too! So we did the research and here is what we found. Here at the Vermont Evaporator Company, we love substituting maple syrup for white sugar in our recipes. We hear often that maple syrup is...
by nikkiwhelley | Jan 2, 2025 | DIY Maple Syrup
At the Vermont Evaporator Company, we aim to bring the tech of big maple to the maple hobbyist! We’ve designed an open-air evaporator that gives you efficiency with a baffled pan (The Sapling). We invented the world’s smallest RO system for maple syrup...
by nikkiwhelley | Dec 14, 2024 | DIY Maple Syrup
Repackaging your homemade maple for gifts is an easy process. You can repackage your maple syrup in smaller bottles or gift bottles. Or you can transform your maple syrup into maple cream, candy, or sugar for a unique homemade gift! We’ll talk you through the...
by nikkiwhelley | Dec 6, 2024 | DIY Maple Syrup
Thinking of making your own maple syrup this season? Overwhelmed with decisions about what to buy, and how much everything costs? Below, we go over how to make maple syrup on a budget. What you need, how you can get started affordably, and where spending a bit more...
by nikkiwhelley | Nov 26, 2024 | About Maple Syrup, DIY Maple Syrup, Our Company, Products and Customers
Hello everyone! It’s Elka McCabe, daughter of Kate McCabe, owner and operator of Vermont Evaporator Company! I have grown up sugaring, and the memories I have make the late winters in Vermont so much better. Sugaring provides an opportunity to get outside, socialize,...
by nikkiwhelley | Nov 22, 2024 | DIY Maple Syrup, Our Company, Products and Customers
The hubbub of Thanksgiving has passed and you are looking forward to the gift-giving part of the holiday season! (Or, maybe not, but you’re still participating in it. It happens! Might as well do it up.) You have an actual or aspiring backyard sugar maker in the...
by nikkiwhelley | Oct 24, 2024 | Cooking with Maple
Lunching with perfection here on cobb salad with maple mustard vinaigrette. To emulate, add to your favorite hearty fall salad: one parts each of maple syrup, Dijon mustard, and red wine vinegar to three parts olive oil. Seriously easy. Totally yummy. If I ever write...
by nikkiwhelley | Oct 15, 2024 | About Maple Syrup
Maple sap runs in the late winter or early spring time, when the nights are freezing and the days are warm. But what exactly causes the sap to run out of the tree and into our buckets? As many sugar makers know, the time for collecting sap from a maple tree is in late...
by nikkiwhelley | Sep 25, 2024 | Beyond Maple, Our Company, Products and Customers
Here at the Vermont Evaporator Company, we’re a bit obsessed with all things syrup. We’re focused most of the year on Maple Syrup, but there are so many types of syrup to be excited about. We’ve written about our experiences making dandelion syrup...
by nikkiwhelley | Sep 23, 2024 | About Maple Syrup, DIY Maple Syrup
Fall is just about here again. Time to escape into the woods. The leaves have started to turn, the air is crisp, and the world is letting out its annual sigh of relief. We can join it, if only for a minute, with a walk among the trees. Time to identify your maple...
by nikkiwhelley | Sep 11, 2024 | DIY Maple Syrup
It’s a perfect fall day in New England. Time for us to put in fuel for next spring’s DIY maple syrup making operation! If we were good little Vermonters, we would have done this while the snow melted. Clearly, we’re still assimilating. Sugarwood...
by nikkiwhelley | Sep 6, 2024 | About Maple Syrup
Maple Sugarin’ In Vermont: A Sweet History by Betty Ann Lockhart is a perfect fair-weather read for the Vermont history buff. With a tone that toggles between history-textbook and folktale, Maple Sugarin’ In Vermont traces the story of Vermont Maple from the early...
by nikkiwhelley | Sep 4, 2024 | Cooking with Maple
Peaches canned in homemade maple syrup: a north-south, east-west delicacy. Our peach tree nearly toppled over with the weight of its fruit a few years ago. Which was a big surprise, as I recall our disbelief at the point of its purchase that one could even grow...
by nikkiwhelley | Aug 30, 2024 | About Maple Syrup, Beyond Maple
We went hiking this summer on the Appalachian Trail, and we brought our homemade maple syrup with us! Both maple syrup and maple candy made the trip with us to see which faired better on the long journey. We used it both to sweeten our oats in the morning, as a sweet...
by nikkiwhelley | Aug 29, 2024 | About Maple Syrup, DIY Maple Syrup, Our Company, Products and Customers
Making maple syrup together is a great way to engage kids—both big and little—with art, science, history, and math! At School Whether you teach in a traditional classroom, a non-traditional classroom, at home, outside, or just want to learn more about...
by nikkiwhelley | Aug 27, 2024 | About Maple Syrup
Pesticides and herbicides are not commonly used in maple syrup production. Does that mean that all maple syrup is organic? Time is tight. The kids are hollering for pancakes. And you keep forgetting to visit your local sugarhouse. Are you with me? You are at the...
by nikkiwhelley | Aug 19, 2024 | About Maple Syrup
From picture books about sugaring in the olden days to modern how-to manuals for kids, children’s literature on maple syrup making is prolific, varied, and fun! It’s back to school time! You can tell by the chill in the evenings, the frenetic energy in your youthful...
by nikkiwhelley | Aug 8, 2024 | About Maple Syrup
“The Maple Sugar Book” by Helen and Scott Nearing is an extensively researched, interesting, and surprisingly funny history of maple sugar making. In true grass-is-always-greener fashion, summer is sometimes a time for dreaming about when it isn’t so hot out....
by nikkiwhelley | Aug 6, 2024 | About Maple Syrup, Beyond Maple
Here in sugar country, it is not uncommon to find oneself travelling down a country lane in the dappled shadows cast by parallel rows of giant sugar maples. How did that happen? Might it happen again? Sugars with a view: sugar maples planted long ago on Sparrow Farm...
by nikkiwhelley | Jul 26, 2024 | Beyond Maple
The peskiest weeds in your sugar woods will be Buckthorn, Honeysuckle, and Barberry, all three found and pictured here in our sugar woods . . . for now! It’s July. Exhale. Your syrup is bottled and shelved, your pans are cleaned and stored, and your maples are leafing...
by nikkiwhelley | Jul 26, 2024 | Cooking with Maple, Our Company, Products and Customers
Wood-Fired Baking on the Sapling Baking bread on the Sapling is easy, delicious, and fun! If there’s nothing quite like fresh-baked bread, there’s nothing at all like fresh-baked bread made in a wood-fired oven! We’ve made all sorts of bread on our...
by nikkiwhelley | Jul 22, 2024 | Beyond Maple
It seems that a lot has been written about the connection between climate change and maple syrup making recently. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Just Google it. This rugged Red Maple seedling should live to be 100 years old, come what may. As we cowered in...
by nikkiwhelley | Jul 20, 2024 | Beyond Maple
The flower of the elderberry, which blooms in midsummer, can be used to make syrup too. While there are cultivars, wild elderberry like this one grows in most of Continental U.S. and Southern and Coastal Canada. Making elderflower syrup is a tradition that hails from...
by nikkiwhelley | Jul 13, 2024 | Cooking with Maple, Our Company, Products and Customers
Wood-Fired Baking and Pizza on the Sapling You don’t need a fancy outdoor kitchen for fancy wood-fired breads. The Sapling Everything Grill is an easy way to make wood-fired pizzas, Montreal bagels, flatbreads, rustic breads, and more. You can turn ANY...
by nikkiwhelley | Jul 9, 2024 | Beyond Maple
When setting out to remove invasive species, bring loppers, a hand saw, burlap, twine, a handcart, and a good-natured assistant! It was a little while ago when, inspired by a talk by one of Vermont’s county foresters, we started this series of blog posts about how...
by nikkiwhelley | Jul 2, 2024 | Beyond Maple
A very young red maple seedling rescued from the garden and waiting to be planted in our sugar woods. Cultivating red maples in your sugar woods can help diffuse the virulence of pests, such as tent caterpillars, that would otherwise wreak havoc on your sugar stand!...
by nikkiwhelley | May 31, 2024 | Cooking with Maple, Our Company, Products and Customers
Multipurpose for Multi-Season Fun We love our Sapling Evaporator for making maple syrup in the early spring. When we designed the Sapling, we set out to create an old-time, barrel-style evaporator to make maple syrup. Something beautiful, efficient, and easy to use....
by nikkiwhelley | Dec 8, 2022 | DIY Maple Syrup
Thinking of making your own maple syrup this season? Trying to figure out what maple syrup sugaring supplies you need to get started? You’ve come to the right place! Here we go over what you need, what’s nice to have, and how it all works. Maple Syrup...
by nikkiwhelley | Jan 28, 2021 | Maple and Backyard News
Maple News It’s time to decide. Is maple sugaring the next new skill you’ll master during the pandemic? Maybe these mouth-watering maple recipes will push you over the edge! To start the day off right, Overnight French Toast with Orange Infused Syrup,...
by nikkiwhelley | Jan 14, 2021 | Maple and Backyard News
Maple News It’s getting to be that time of year! And maple-flavored news does not disappoint. Another university starts a maple syrup program, and West Virginia Maple Days are set. If you own property in southern New Jersey, you may have an opportunity to help...
by nikkiwhelley | Dec 30, 2020 | Maple and Backyard News
Maple News And time marches on. Here we are in the wee days of 2020 with maple still making the news: maple syrup recently appeared in the blockbuster video game Fortnight, as well as with its co-conspirator silly string in this police blotter. And, in Canada, where...
by nikkiwhelley | Dec 17, 2020 | Maple and Backyard News
Maple News It’s holiday season! And, by that, we mean Happy National Maple Syrup Day, of course! As for all those other holidays, they sure seem to have one thing in common: epic maple recipes. Welcome, Yule! In addition to Vermont Centric Winter Cocktails,...
by nikkiwhelley | Dec 6, 2020 | Maple and Backyard News
Maple News The holidays are abundant with opportunities to cook and bake with (and eat) maple! Here are our picks from the last few weeks: Maple, Browned Butter Apple Pie, Saturday Morning Challah French Toast, Tuscan Holiday Bread Pudding, Brown Sugar Maple Cookies,...
by nikkiwhelley | Nov 20, 2020 | Maple and Backyard News
Maple News Here in Vermont, we use maple for everything, including emergency medicine, and, in the immortal words of SNL, here “you can put your weed” in maple too! Those are two topics that definitely won’t be discussed at the Vermont Maple Sugar...
by nikkiwhelley | Nov 4, 2020 | Maple and Backyard News
Maple News This stick season, take a free online beginning maple sugaring class, pick up some maple cocktail syrups and bitters by Vermont’s own Runamok Maple, or try and parse Rob Gronkowski’s latest maple syrup sports analogy. What? And then...
by nikkiwhelley | Oct 23, 2020 | Maple and Backyard News
Maple News A pile of leaves and a pile of news. New in the industry: “small-batch maple” is now officially a thing, a Quebec company gets global recognition for using maple technology to clean water, and a maple beer emerges with the best name ever: Sugar...
by nikkiwhelley | Oct 7, 2020 | Maple and Backyard News
Maple News Time to open up another can of maple news! The maple industry continues to innovate and delight with travel-sized, TSA approved Maple to Go hitting the US market and Foray’s Cannabis-Infused Hard Maple Caramels arriving in Canada. Ohio, Virginia and...
by nikkiwhelley | Sep 24, 2020 | Maple and Backyard News
Maple News A fresh stack of maple news is hot off the griddle! Vermont’s Maple 100 event is now underway with sweet things to do here, there and everywhere; from hikes to baking to a rousing game of maple bingo, for the true fan of maple, it’s not to be...
by nikkiwhelley | Sep 11, 2020 | Maple and Backyard News
Maple News Maple events are back! Usually held in the spring, and cancelled along with all-that-was-normal in early 2020, maple associations across the United States have rallied to put on fall events this year. Events like Vermont’s “The Maple 100,”...
by nikkiwhelley | Aug 26, 2020 | Maple and Backyard News
Maple News Pandemic or no pandemic, the maple industry is doing great. In fact, a new study calls for big maple to experience “stunning growth” in the coming years. In other industry news: you can now purchase maple syrup that glitters. An embarrassment of...
by nikkiwhelley | Aug 13, 2020 | Maple and Backyard News
Maple News It’s as hot and sticky as a batch of maple syrup out there! Tired of binging on Netflix to beat the heat? Binge the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) Summer Conference, now available online, instead, including our 90 minute tree-to-table,...
by nikkiwhelley | Jul 31, 2020 | Maple and Backyard News
Maple News It’s that time of the summer. It’s that time of the pandemic. It’s. All. About. Food. We don’t even feel the need to string these together with connective word-ingredients. Let it be like food poetry. Say these aloud with us, now:...
by nikkiwhelley | Jul 15, 2020 | Maple and Backyard News
Maple News All roads lead to the pandemic, it seems. Even in maple, the news is just thick with it. Some of the news is bad: a Vermont maple producer, for example, has been forced to sell his operation because of the extended, COVID-related Canadian border closure....
by nikkiwhelley | Jul 2, 2020 | Maple and Backyard News
Maple News Did you know that there are more than 100 maple species around the world, including a prairie-hearty variety, and a “bully”? Or that some folks have finally been able to eradicate the villainous Asian longhorned beetle? Neither did we! News from...
by nikkiwhelley | Jun 18, 2020 | Maple and Backyard News
Maple News Vermont set maple production records in 2020, maintaining its status as the nation’s largest maple producer, while New Hampshire reported an average harvest. You may now find maple on the ingredient list of your pecan butter or beer, or mixed with...
by nikkiwhelley | Jun 4, 2020 | Maple and Backyard News
Maple News The news over the last few weeks has been 99% bad. Take a break from it by catching up with what happened in the world of maple. While New York maple mourned the passing of a maple icon at the age of 105, Quebec set maple production records despite...
by nikkiwhelley | May 15, 2020 | Beyond Maple, Our Company, Products and Customers
How to make delicious, fresh, wood-fire bread on the Sapling Everything Grill! Perfection: King Arthur Flour’s No-Knead Crusty White Bread made wood-fired on the Sapling Everything Grill If there’s nothing quite like fresh-baked bread, there’s nothing at all like...
by nikkiwhelley | May 5, 2020 | Beyond Maple, Cooking with Maple, Our Company, Products and Customers
DIY maple syrup season is over, but grilling season is here! Here’s how to grill and smoke on the Sapling Everything Grill! Maple Cured Bacon: Acquire pork belly (pictured: 8 lbs.). Cure in fridge for two weeks with 6 tablespoons sea salt, 1/3 cup maple syrup, and 1...
by nikkiwhelley | Dec 31, 2019 | DIY Maple Syrup
If you’ve identified your maple trees, everything else you need to know in order to make maple syrup in your backyard is here in its shortest form. Sugaring season is drawing close. You want to start this year but you aren’t sure you have time to figure it...
by nikkiwhelley | Jun 20, 2019 | About Maple Syrup
Oil had Rockefeller, steel had Carnegie, and F. Scott FitzGerald brought us the Great Gatsby. But Maple had a King! Have you ever wondered how maple got big? How it went from a subsistence crop to a farmer’s sideline, to a product that could mount a flavor challenge...
by nikkiwhelley | Mar 20, 2019 | Our Company, Products and Customers
The Sapling Evaporator is engineered for maximum DIY maple-syrup efficiency! A while back, a prospective customer named Tom emailed me with the following question: “I love your maple syrup evaporators. But, without being a jerk, why should I spend that much on a...
by nikkiwhelley | Dec 19, 2018 | Beyond Maple
‘Twas the Friday before Christmas and all through the shop, machinery was whirring, with a chug, clang, and pop! The product was nestled and shelved with great care, in the knowledge that new owners soon would be there. And this mamma-CEO, whose energy was sapped, had...
by nikkiwhelley | Nov 13, 2018 | About Maple Syrup
The first chapter in the history of maple syrup is a uniquely Native North American one. First there were historic midterm elections, and then I turned 40. (Nope! Not unrelated! My mother and father voted on the way to the delivery room.) Then there was the one...
by nikkiwhelley | Sep 28, 2018 | Our Company, Products and Customers
City folk want to know: who ARE these people who make their own maple syrup in their backyards? Well, for one thing, we’re people who live . . . here! There’s something we’ve been wondering lately from both personal and professional perspectives: Who ARE we backyard...
by nikkiwhelley | Sep 5, 2018 | DIY Maple Syrup
Not to be confused with “sugar woods,” a.k.a. the “sugar bush,” or “sugar stand,” “sugar wood” refers to the fuel you need to power your wood-fired evaporator. It’s 90 degrees in New England, so, naturally, it’s time for us to put in supplies for next Spring’s...
by nikkiwhelley | Jun 17, 2018 | Our Company, Products and Customers
Like great dads everywhere, ours are there when we need them, even if it means many hours of hard work designing and producing a brand new product for a brand new company. Justin’s father, Terry, taking a well-earned break from production to help the sales team at...
by nikkiwhelley | Nov 13, 2017 | Our Company, Products and Customers
OK, you know now why a continuous-flow pan beats ye olde brew pot for making maple syrup in your backyard. But how exactly does one use the first-ever grill-top continuous-flow pan? It’s SO easy that assembly, setup and operation can be covered in 1,000 words or less!...
by nikkiwhelley | Oct 26, 2017 | Our Company, Products and Customers
Seedling Urban Evaporator is a Continuous-Flow Pan and thus More Efficient than a Lobster Pot People responded so well to my last blog post that I decided to keep it technical this week. Let’s, as promised, talk about why a continuous-flow pan—like the Sapling...
by nikkiwhelley | Sep 25, 2017 | Beyond Maple
OK. Enough bucolic wandering through the forest to identify the best trees for sugaring. Enough feel-good homemade maple syrup peaches. It’s Monday morning. Grab a cup of coffee. Let’s talk about climate change like we said we would. No, it’s OK! This is NOT going to...
by nikkiwhelley | Sep 8, 2016 | Our Company, Products and Customers
The third Milk Money campaign giving Vermonters the opportunity to discover and invest in local businesses, is live! And boy is it Vermonty! When Kate and Justin McCabe moved their family to a house on 10 acres of trees – including maple – in Montpelier, they decided...
by nikkiwhelley | Jul 22, 2016 | Beyond Maple
Now that the leaves are in for the summer, it’s a good time to think about which trees you’d like to tap for next spring. While we usually associate sugar making with the sugar maple exclusively, there are many trees that produce sap that can be boiled down to syrup,...
