It felt more like a traditional winter in New Hampshire for a change. Tapping started in Mid-January, but we took our time in the cold temperatures and didn’t finish until end of February. Our Wilmot woods received an addition of 700 taps last summer/fall, so we were set up for a possible record-breaking season at HHF. At the end of 2024 we received a grant that supported the purchase of a very shiny, new evaporator at the sugarhouse.

I’m not sure that we thrived at times, given the looooong season, but we survived! The 2024 maple season came to an end on April 9th with the last boil. Our first boil at the sugarhouse was January 29th… that means we were in operation for 71 days. When you add in the days spend tapping trees in January, we had a maple season that lasted 86 days! We do not boil every single day during the season, but that is still a long time to be riding the roller coaster of Mother Nature to yield a good crop.