Farm Blog

Happy Equinox! See y'all tomorrow!

Happy Equinox! See y'all tomorrow!

It’s finally here. Take a deep breath in… and out.

_______SPRING_______

Warm breezes, songbirds, spring peepers, dogtooth violets and daffodils—and just like that, winter is officially over… we are more than ready. And we are so excited to see you tomorrow!

Our annual Syrup Release is happening Saturday, March 21st, at Molley Chomper in Lansing. We’ll have our entire season’s inventory of syrup available. We’ll also have syrup tastings ready so you can experience the shifts in flavor from the early, mid, and late season runs.

Syrup sales begin right at noon

  • Cash preferred and appreciated. Checks and Credit Cards accepted

  • F.A.N. Club will be there with maple-inspired treats, raising funds for heating assistance and emergency needs in our community. More info here.

  • Molley Chomper will have cider on tap + bottles to take home including a Waterfall Farm Maple cider.

  • Doug’s Books will be available- The Trees of Ashe County, Painters and Their Paintings, and Photography of Ashe County.

If you’re making a day of it, there is plenty to love in Lansing

  • Old Orchard Creek General Store- 7am-7pm
    Coffee & pastries all day. Brunch from 10-2

  • The Windfall
    Our newest shop on Main Street—a curation of fine crafts and artisanal goods

  • The Squirrel & Nut
    Local artisan market with a touch of vintage

  • Lansing Creeper Trail Park
    Walking paths, dog park, playground

  • More to explore: LansingYall.com

More on the Waterfall Farm Story

  • Doug will be at the Ashe County Public Library via Friends of the Library this coming Wednesday, March 25th, from 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM to share films and stories from the farm, along with his books and a Q&A.

We can’t wait to see you tomorrow.

— Wheeler, Michael, and Doug

A look inside the sugar house... Check out our first video!

Wheeler and Michael have started a YouTube channel!

@WheelerandMichael IN THE MAKING

This is something that we have been working towards for a while, and we have decided that sugar season is the perfect moment to launch this new endeavor. Our goal is to document the seasons of a handmade life in our workshops and on our farm. We hope to share a look inside our processes as makers- in the wood shop and leather shop, on the farm, in the woods, in the garden, and wherever the project of the moment leads us. We will be making films that quietly follow the slow work of shaping materials, tending the land, and cultivating beauty in the everyday. Check out our first video!

In the early years, making syrup was a very slow and rather peaceful process for us. We used to invite friends and family to come join us in the sugarhouse, and we would enjoy each other’s company and conversation over the soft, atmospheric sounds of the fire crackling and the sap bubbling and boiling in the evaporator as we all waited with great anticipation for syrup to come off the finish pan about once an hour. This was, however, when we only had a few hundred taps, and before we had vacuum pressure on our lines. As we have expanded our operation, we have, out of necessity, added equipment in our sugarhouse to be able to keep up with the increased volume of sap. In doing so, the entire operation has become much more industrial. The boiling is now loud enough that we spend most of the day wearing hearing protection. We now explicitly ask visitors not to come while we are making syrup because the entire process requires our complete attention. We stoke the fire every five minutes, and syrup comes out of the finish pan at a slow, but near constant pace. We are on our feet, moving from on end of the room to the next, for the entire day as we stoke, clean, filter, bottle, label, etc, all while keeping the evaporator hot enough that it feels like it might just somehow take off on its own like a steam-powered locomotive. After a long day of this, when we have processed nearly 1,000 gallons of sap in an 8 hour window of time, we are all very ready to sit down for a while and enjoy a quiet, still respite.

While most of our days boiling are now rather loud and busy, the first day of the season is still a little more like those earlier days. We call this process “sweetening the pan” because we are filling the evaporator with sap for the first time that season. The system holds about 50 gallons of liquid at any moment during use, and that volume becomes increasingly concentrated as steam comes off and new sap comes in. Even after a full day of boiling the sap in the pan is still too dilute to make finished syrup. For that reason, this is perhaps the most quiet day of the season in the sugar house as we open up our systems, and reacquaint ourselves with the many tasks of the sugar house. Once the pan is “sweet” the real work begins on the following days of boiling.

In this short film, we bring you into Waterfall Farm, nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. We walk to work through the snow and up the mountain. At the sugar house we open up our systems, let down the season’s first run of sap, and light a fire for our first boil.

We invite you to subscribe to our youtube channel to see more of what we do here on Waterfall Farm.

All systems go for the syrup sale next weekend, Saturday, March 21st at noon!

We hope to see you there.

Syrup Release March 21st at Molley Chomper

Our syrup making season has concluded, and we made a lot of syrup!

Every year we hope for a “normal” season. As we talked it over during a long boil this year, it finally dawned on us that we’ve never had a normal season… and that there’s no such thing! Every late winter and early spring (also known by us as “sugar season”) is simply different and unique. The forecast will always be somewhat unpredictable, and it is important for us to remember that this uncertainty is, in part, what makes the whole process so exciting. Our salient farm notes for the year are that we made a good bit of syrup in less time than any other year. On the days that the sap ran, it ran BIG, and we had very large amounts of sap to process. The three weeks of deep freeze in late January and early February led to a long, slow thaw and a subsequent sap run that lasted nearly two weeks. This single event yielded more than half of this year’s syrup total. A few more sap runs followed, and we rounded out the season with a total of about 99 gallons of syrup. Our benchmark for a great year is 100 gallons, so that’ll do!

An up close look at a red maple flower.

Each year, different factors dictate what ends our season, but it all generally has to do with warm weather. This year we pulled our taps despite the fact that sap was still flowing. We noticed Friday morning that the extended warm weather had enticed the red maple buds to bloom. If you’re in the mountains right now, look out your window: the red maple trees are the only thing blooming in the forest, and you can see their bright red blooms shining. These are always the first to pop in the woods every spring. When the trees bloom, the chemistry of the sap changes to support the flowering, and syrup made from this sap no longer tastes good. The syrup flavor might be described as maple syrup… with a hint of gym socks (so we are told). When we see that first red maple bud open, we know that it is either time to pull those taps on the blooming trees, or shut it all down. Since the sap run had slowed to just a trickle with no freeze in sight for the extended forecast, we decided that our season was officially over.

As we button things up on the farm (pulling taps and rinsing lines, and putting the sugar house to bed), we are now turning our attention to our upcoming syrup release event at Molley Chomper. We will have lots of syrup for sale this year. Previously, in a concerted effort to make sure that everyone who comes to the event to purchase syrup has the chance to do just that, we have had to set some limits on how many bottles of syrup each customer can purchase. Many of you are driving a great distance to be there, and we don’t want anyone to go home empty handed. So, we will only ration sales if we must (depending on turnout). We made 20-25% more syrup this year than we have in the past couple of seasons, so we expect that there will be plenty of bottles to go around.

Michael, Wheeler and Doug mark the end of sap season with a team pic.

Syrup Release Event at Molley Chomper

Waterfall Farm will hold its 2026 once-annual maple syrup release on Saturday, March 21 at Molley Chomper. We will begin promptly at noon. This is the one day each year when our entire season’s maple syrup inventory becomes available for purchase. We will have samples available for tasting so that you can explore the differences in flavor and choose from our early, mid, and late season syrup.

Our syrup comes in 8 oz bottles and are $20 each. Cash preferred.

We hope to see you there!!





F.A.N. Club’s Menu of Maple Delights

During the syrup release our friends from F.A.N.Club (Friends Assisting Neighbors) will be in attendance hosting a fundraiser featuring maple-inspired treats. We’ll be donating Waterfall Farm maple syrup for their confections, and all proceeds will support F.A.N.’s work helping Ashe County residents with heating and fuel needs.

Friends Assisting Neighbors is a local nonprofit that provides critical assistance to members of our community facing heating and fuel challenges, and hosts community events throughout the year to support that mission. We’re grateful to partner with them and hope you’ll consider supporting their work while you’re here.

Spring Dinner

Visitors who’d like to make a weekend of it are invited to arrive Friday evening for the Cider House Supper Club Spring Dinner on March 20 at 6:30 pm, also at Molley Chomper. The dinner will feature a Korean-inspired meal served family-style by Kim Hunter. Reservations are required in advance.

Long freeze leads to a phenomenal sap run, & celebrating 50 years on Waterfall Farm.

Doug stoking the evaporator.

After a slow, cold start to our season, the weather has finally tipped in our favor and the sap has been flowing. In the past two weeks we’ve collected an estimated 3,000+ gallons of sap and have boiled that down to about 50 gallons of syrup so far.


It was tough sitting on our hands during the deep freeze earlier this month, but our reward has been an epic sap run in the resulting thaw. When the ground is deeply and thoroughly frozen, it takes time to soften. That slow thaw over many days results in an extended sap run and higher yields.

Weather like this has us pondering what it might be like to be sugar farmers in northern climes. Sap runs depend on freeze/thaw cycles. Here in the South, we hope for a freeze so that a subsequent thaw will provoke the flow. In the North, it’s often so cold that sugarers are hoping for a thaw between ongoing freezes. This winter, having such a large run after our prolonged, deep freeze has us considering just how much bigger the sap runs likely are in northern forests — and how tenuously we are perched on the southern edge of where sugaring is even possible, let alone practical.

Doug on the farm circa ~1976.

In other news, on January 31st we celebrated 50 years of Waterfall Farm. Not 50 years of sugaring, but 50 years since Doug bought this land and began living his dream.

Doug’s original cabin on the farm.

When he first walked the property as a potential buyer, it was winter. He remembers being struck by the beauty — the waterfall and creek tinkling through the ravine, the long views looking north and west into Creston, and beyond to White Top and Pond Mountain in the distance. He noticed, too, the abundance of maple trees. As a child, his mother would put maple candy into his and his sisters’ Christmas stockings, and he felt warmed by the possibility that one day he might make maple syrup here.

At 26, he was in love with the land. His dream was to farm and to make himself a part of this place. He wasn’t attached to the how so much as the being and the doing. That openness led him through many permutations of farming over the years — zucchinis, Christmas trees, a nursery of ornamental landscape plants of conifers and Japanese maples. It would be 30 years before he tapped his first tree.

Doug’s friend Harry Beard, an avid hobby sugarer here in the county, encouraged Doug to begin tapping. In 2006, Doug set 10 taps in maple trees that bordered the field around his house. From that first taste of syrup, he was hooked.

The hobby slowly grew legs. In 2010, over the course of a week, he hosted what can only be described as a barn-raising. With the help of family and friends, the sugarhouse was built from poplar and locust harvested and milled right here on the farm. In 2012, Wheeler and Doug became business partners and officially began making syrup to sell in early 2013. That first year, we produced just 30 or 40 cases of syrup from a few hundred gravity taps.

Family and friends came together to build the sugar house.

During those early years, our total naiveté as sugarers hovered somewhere between comedy and chaos. We had only the most basic equipment and a less-than-basic understanding of how it all worked. We were without peers as southern sugarers and had few places to turn for answers. Wheeler and Michael met in 2013, and Michael entered the maple picture in 2014. Over the years, we’ve learned many lessons the hard way and slowly acquired better, more efficient equipment.

By lucky chance — and generous spirit — we were mentored by Bruce Gillilan of Gillilan Family Maple in Vermont. Bruce has traveled to our farm many times, showing us best practices for running lines and building systems. In 2018, he was named to the North American Maple Hall of Fame for his lifetime of service to the maple industry. We’re grateful to Bruce.

Today, Michael and Wheeler run the business, with Doug still deeply involved. Through failures and successes, we’ve gained a steady handle on our operation — and yet every year remains an adventure as we navigate the unknowns and x-factors that keep us humble and guessing as farmers.

One of Doug’s first boils in the new sugar house, on the new evaporator in 2011.

Maple Season Begins: Tapped, Snowed in, and Ready

How About That Weather???

Maple season has begun on Waterfall Farm… sort of.

We tapped our trees on January 16th and 17th. It took two days with a crew of three—Wheeler, Michael, and Jason—to set about 800 taps. This year, we intentionally chose to tap while temperatures were below freezing, testing a new-to-us theory that frozen wood would allow us to drill crisp, clean holes. It worked beautifully.

Each tap starts with a 5/16” hole, drilled about 2” deep and carefully placed in relation to healed-over tap holes from past years, and with an eye toward future seasons. Taps typically sit anywhere from chest height to as high as you can reach overhead. On the steep, slippery slopes of the sugar bush, finding the right spot—and solid footing beneath it—is something of an art form.

Drilling clean, straight holes matters. The better the hole, the better the seal when we set the tap. That seal is especially important because our entire system runs under vacuum. Even small leaks reduce vacuum pressure, which directly translates to lower sap yields. So, for us, it was worth tromping through snow and windchill, with temperatures topping out around 22 degrees, to tap this way.

Despite the winter weather, our spirits were high as we worked. The mood is always buoyant when we work with Jason. Our banter spins endlessly around puns and dumb jokes that keep us laughing through the work. By the time we paused for group photos—commemorating the tapping crew for the year—we were completely punch drunk on cold, laughing hysterically at a joke that wasn’t even funny. That effervescence carried us through the day.

Two weeks later… cold it has remained.

We tapped in the cold expecting our first sap run in the days that followed, but the forecast quickly shifted from cold… to colder.

Last weekend, we braced for Winter Storm Fern. The forecast began with two feet of snow—daunting but manageable—then shifted to two inches of ice from sleet and freezing rain, along with warnings of catastrophic damage and widespread power outages. After the significant damage our sugar bush sustained from Helene, and the ice storm we endured last sugar season, we were properly terrified. We imagined major ice damage to our trees and tubing system—enough to end our season before it even began.

Luckily, we escaped unscathed, receiving about three inches of dense, gritty snow instead.

After all the fervor around last weekends forecast, we are officially out of hype for the current weather event swirling around us. As I write this, we have about six inches of fresh snow layered over a couple inches of old ice crust, and the snow is still falling heavily—full winter wonderland mode.

We have several days of severe cold ahead. That said, our fires are burning bright, and with the trees already tapped, we are poised—hopefully—for our first sap runs of the season next week when/if the cold finally softens.



Save the Date

Our syrup release event will be Saturday, March 21st, at Molley Chomper in Lansing, NC.

This is our once-a-year, in-person event where we make the season’s syrup available. For those who have joined us before, we can’t wait to see you again. And for those who haven’t—we’d love to welcome you.

Thank you, as always, for following along and supporting this work—it means more to us than we can say.

-Wheeler, Michael and Doug

Syrup Release Saturday, March 15th at Noon

We look forward to seeing you all at our syrup release event at Molly Chomper next weekend!

Molley Chomper. 165 Piney Creek Rd Lansing, NC 28643.

Saturday March 15th, at noon

Syrup sales will begin promptly at noon and will continue while supplies last. Please read the end of this newsletter for specific details. 

Molley Chomper is a local brewer of hard cider and fruit wines that celebrate the fruit and farmers of southern Appalachia. This will by the 3rd year they’ve hosted our syrup event and we are excited to share this lovely venue with you again this year. 

We have some exciting new elements to add to the event this year. In addition to our maple syrup, there will be live music, food and of course, cider. Doug will also have copies of his books- The Trees of Ashe County, Painters and Their Paintings, and Photography in Ashe County, North Carolina.

Lucas Pasley and Kyle Dean will be lifting us up with fiddle and guitar from 12:00 - 2:00.

F.A.N. Club (Friends And Neighbors Club) will be in attendance offering a menu of maple delights featuring our maple syrup.  F.A.N. Club is a local nonprofit whose mission is to supply firewood and offset heating costs for families in need in our community. This is a cause we can all get behind. During the storm, their large cache of firewood washed away but that hasn’t stopped them from working hard to be a much needed resource in our community. We have donated our syrup for their menu, and we hope you will enjoy supporting their tasty efforts. All of their proceeds will go toward assistance with heating costs for local families in need.



Currently, at the farm, we are experiencing what appears be our final sap run for the season. While we had hoped to make more (like always!), it seems that we might only make about 70% of the production total from 2024. What explains this?… To be honest, we are not entirely sure. Since we tapped our trees, the weather, in theory, has been mostly favorable for sap flow: lots of cold temperatures with frequent warm (but not too warm) days following. Maybe we needed more precipitation throughout, and perhaps we had one too many warm days in the beginning of season, but we just never had the kind of heavy sap runs that we have come to expect with the scale of our operation. Although we cannot say for certain, we wonder if after this last six months of intense weather in our region, the trees were simply a little less active with their sap in response to the stress of these events. Maybe so, maybe no. That’s farming!

A lot of our farm narrative this year has been connected to the hurricane, and we can’t talk about Helene without talking about Lansing and Molley Chomper. For those of you who have been to Lansing before, you will remember it as a charming, little relic town from the era of the Virginia Creeper rail line. In recent years, it has been experiencing a lot of new energy and growth. There’s a growing seasonal farmers market in the Creeper Trail park, which also added a fabulous new playground in addition to its swimming holes, walking trails, music stage, and dog park. Pie on the Mountain and Molley Chomper brought pizza and cider, along with Old Orchard Creek General store with its coffee, treats, other special drinks and books. There was also CJ’s Market, a locally owned grocery store, the Squirrel and Nut with handmade gifts, and many more businesses.  A lot of community has grown in these spaces.

The town still promises charm, but it was devastated by the flood waters. Big Horse Creek flows through the valley floor, past the town of Lansing, a stone’s throw from the entrance to many of these stores. On September 27th, the usually cheerful, 3-4 foot deep creek swelled to fill the valley and flooded ALL the business on the main street in the town. The coffee shop had 5-6 feet of water. The post office had 8 feet of water up to its ceiling. The fire department flooded. Lansing was under water. 

In the weeks after the storm, as many were still reeling from the damage, Lansing became a buzzing hub of action as people poured out of the woodwork to help one another. Miraculously, Molley Chomper, which sits just outside of the town, did not sustain flood damage or lose power. Amazing! With this advantage, they generously opened their doors to the community. An impromptu soup kitchen soon materialized, feeding all who came through -the displaced, folks volunteering in the recovery effort, and people who had lost power and were unable to cook or wash dishes at home. In the building directly behind Molley Chomper, Lost Province Center for Cultural Arts opened the doors of the Old School House, becoming one of many distribution hubs for all manner of donated supplies, food, and household items.  Molley Chomper was a truly vital connection point for this community after the storm. 

Three Cheers for Molley Chomper!!

I am happy to report the Old Orchard Creek General Store has been restored and re-opened and their coffee is as delicious as ever. The Squirrel and Nut which is a local artisan market with a dash of vintage has just re-opened as of March 8th. These are huge victories! We encourage you to stop and and show them some love when you come to Lansing next weekend. The main part of the Creeper Trail Park is open as well. CJ’s Market, the post office and many others are working hard to restore and re-open soon.

Given our decreased production for the season, we will be bringing slightly less syrup to sell than we did last year. For this reason, depending on turnout size at the event, we may need to limit the amount sold per person. In the past, folks have come from as far as the coast, and we do not want to turn anyone away empty handed. We hate to do this, but we only make so much of this special stuff, and we want to share it with all of you. We will offer taste testing so you can sample the shifting flavors of the season. During the season, the color and flavor of the syrup changes daily, and our blonde, early syrup gradually shifts to the dark, rich syrup with a robust flavor that so many of you love best. If you want to try it all, we will be happy to mix-and-match bottles from different dates of the season.

Syrup price is $18 per 8 oz bottle. Cash is greatly preferred and appreciated, but we can also accept checks… and credit cards if you simply must.

There is currently a chance of rain in the forecast for Saturday, but since temperatures will be relatively balmy, we are going forward with teh event. Bring an umbrella just in case.

We look forward to seeing you Saturday!

It's March and the sap is still flowing!

It’s March! For the first time in many years the maple syrup season is spilling over into March. After a deep freeze January and a hot and cold February, the weather forecacst for the next ten days portends some good sap runs. We don’t want to count our bottles before they are full but a late season sap run coming up this week could cap off what has otherwise been a “hurry up and wait” season.

The cold weather has held back the budding of the trees, with not a blushing red maple in sight, but that could change quickly with the temperatures soaring into the mid 60s next week. So the next ten days look like the sprint to the finish line just in time to see everyone at Molley Chomper on Saturday March 15th for our syrup release. Until then, think snow.

For those of you who are new here, every year at the end of sugar season we hold an in-person event at Molley Chomper in Lansing, NC where we make our entire inventory of this year’s syrup available for purchase. We usually sell out at this event and won’t have syrup again until the next sugar season rolls around, so if you want to get some syrup, you’ll want to make it to this event! Molley Chomper is a local brewery that makes hard cider and fruit wines that celebrate the fruit and farmers of southern Appalachia. In collaboration with local farms Molley Chomper uses apples, blueberries, raspberries, lavender and more in their ciders. They even make a Waterfall Farm Maple Cider. Yum!

In mid-February we were served an ice storm with an extra side of ice. Freezing rain accumulated on trees to the point that you could go outside at any given moment and hear the sounds of branches and entire trees popping, snapping and crashing under the weight of the ice. When the ice melted we stood bewildered in the woods, confounded once again by widespread damage to the trees in our sugar bush. It was at first hard to tell where Helene’s damage ended and the ice damage began. But then we began to notice in our survey of the damage that Helene’s winds blew strictly south so all the down trees from that event fell UP the mountain as we are on a north facing slope. The ice storm was acting under gravity’s force pulling things straight down, which in most cases meant things fell DOWN the hill to the north with the ice.

Luckily the damage was not as extensive as Helene, and after a full day of making repairs, our system was back on line.

Major sap line repairs underway where a large cluster of trees fell in the ice storm. Brush had to be cut and cleared and many repairs made in order to get these lines suspended in the air and in working order. These black pipes are the main sap lines that the majority of our taps and blue tubing connect to, delivering sap out of the woods and into our tanks at the sugar house.

Sugar Season 2025 has begun!

After the most challenging conditions we have encountered in our 15 year history of maple syrup production, the 2025 sugaring season has finally begun at Waterfall Farm.

Tropical Storm Helene blasted through Ashe county on Friday morning, September 27, 2024, leaving a trail of destruction like nothing anyone from around here had ever seen before. Here are Waterfall Farm, we dodged complete disaster, all things considered. Though nearly fifty trees uprooted and crashed all around, the only loss of property was a work van, which was nearly chopped in two by the weight of a mature American Beech tree. Trees fell all around our houses and buildings, but none of our structures were damaged, miraculously. 

A beech tree fell on the van and an uprooted oak fell across the road. The oak blocked Doug in for 4 days and was a near-miss with the leather shop.

We were able to clear most the downed trees on our road immediately, but one of the largest and oldest trees on the farm fell in the middle of the road on the hill up to Doug’s place and the sugar house. It took us four days to coordinate an effort to get that tree out of the way, and that section of the road open.

Everyone in our community was hit hard but Helene, especially those closer to the creeks and rivers below. It was the worst disaster in living memory. Homes were shredded by the water, bridges were taken out, power poles snapped in half and lines were down all over, and roads were simply missing in certain places. The nearby town of Lansing had water up to the ceilings in some of its commercial buildings. Cell signal and local radio went down for many days and we were without power for 15 days. Our belief that we live in a place that is somewhat insulated from natural disasters was destroyed along with so many things in our community. Floods here in the mountains wreck everything in their path. Valleys and hollers were gutted by the onslaught of water leaving behind a mess of saturated and unrecognizable belongings and ruins.

The first weeks after the storm, we did our part to help those in the area that were most adversely affected. We were deeply moved by the way in which this county banded together to help one another, and mitigate and fix the damage from this disaster. Beyond that, so many people travelled a great distance to come help those in need. The overall display of generosity and goodwill was inspiring. In the first hours and days after the storm we were overwhelmed by the damages we sustained on the farm, but as we ventured out into the community, helping others empty their homes of all that had been ruined by the floodwaters, it made us see that we were lucky to have only a large mess of trees to resolve.

One of many complicated and dangerous tangles of fallen trees in the sugar bush.

Once the volunteer efforts were slowing down in other places, we started to look more closely at the damage to our sugar bush. The woods in the lower zone were simply a tangled a mess of downed trees and bent tubing. At first, the loss looked insurmountable. After a more thorough investigation, however, we recognized that most of the destruction occurred in the lower half of the woods. It seems that a more localized burst of wind damage occurred in a specific area on the farm. The upper zones, which hold maybe 2/3 of our total taps, were nearly untouched! This came as an extraordinary relief. The lower zone was still a daunting task to clear and repair, but much more accessible to repair than our upper zone. All of the trees, the wrecked tubing and and pipes, and the wire that suspended the entire system would need to be repaired or replaced in time for the start of the sugaring season just three months away.

Friends and neighbors, grassroots volunteers, numerous volunteer relief organizations, convoys of linesmen and rock trucks the National Guard, FEMA and more all jumped into motion to respond to the disaster. Our needs here at Waterfall, while overwhelming to us, seemed inconsequential compared to the needs of our larger community. Early on our friend Sara Ford heard about the damage to our farm and offered to send volunteers in her contact network to come help us clear downed trees. We declined. There was more urgent help needed in other places. She quietly passed our need along and it ended up in the hands of the High Country Food Hub and Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture who stepped up to the plate after the storm, organizing volunteers and matching them with farms in need of help. On Tuesday, October 8th, Michael set out into the woods for the first time to start chipping away at the tree work in the sugar bush. We were resigned to the possibility that sugar season might not happen for us this year, or if so, happen in an abbreviated way. After an hour of working alone, Wheeler received an entirely unexpected phone call from the Food Hub, saying, “we have three volunteers with chainsaws and timber-cutting experience ready to head your way.” At that time, we didn’t even know that they knew about our problems. We were near tears with gratitude.

Volunteers pausing for lunch. This and so many other meals were provided by grassroots groups who set up throughout our community providing meals in the effort to support storm recovery.

That week, on two separate occasions, we had a a volunteer crew with as many as five chainsaws running at once, and at least that many people again helping us cut and drag brush off and away from the maple lines. By the end of those two days, we had cleared a path for almost all of the lower zone to be rebuilt. Without this help, we would not have been able to get this finished in our short, three month window of time. A very special thanks goes out to Lauren and Travis Hutchins of Boone, and Kyle Jones of North Georgia who’s skillful saw work neutralized countless dangerous tangles of fallen trees that were far beyond our ability to approach. A special thanks also to Jason Fitzgerald, Bailey Arend, Erin Etheridge, James Helms, and many others who’s names we did not quite capture but to whom we are forever grateful.

Day 2 tapping crew Bella, Michael, Bailey, Jason (& Wheeler who was taking the picture.)

From there, Michael and Jason spent the remainder of the year getting the lower zone of tubing back into the air, and connected to all of the trees. This task was finally finished by the first week of January. Just in time.

We tackled the tapping portion of our season a little differently this year. We had two, different tapping crews our of friends on Friday and Saturday, January 17th and 18th. With nearly six inches of snow still on the ground from the arctic blast in early 2025, we moved slowly from tap to tap. Having not yet had time to make any of the expected, routine repairs to the upper zone, Michael followed behind the tapping crew with a repair kit, and focused his efforts on repairing anything that we encountered as we went along. Although we certainly lost a few of our maples in the hurricane, we believe that we have nearly the same number of taps in as the year before.

Day 1 tapping crew: Michael, Tyler, Wheeler, Doug Spell & Jason setting out to tap in 6” of snow.


Before the storm we had an expansion underway in the woods, working towards adding new taps to our system. But we were unable to complete that expansion in the wake of storm repairs, and that is OK. We are content with the idea that this may not be biggest or best year that we have ever had. Given all that we have been through this year, we are just thrilled to be put back together and have the opportunity to make maple syrup again.

It is now early February and temperatures have lifted from our long freeze. Sap is starting to come in and we have made or first runs of they year of syrup. It is as delicious as ever. 

Save the Date!

Mark your calendars. Our annual syrup release will be at Molley Chomper in Lansing, NC on Saturday March 15th. We have some fun new things to add to the event this year and we’ll tell you all about it soon so stay tuned! We hope to see you there. In the event of inlclement weather on the 15th, our rain date will be Saturday March 29th.

Thank You!!

First of all, we would just like to say that we are utterly blown-away by the tremendous turnout and warm reception that we had last weekend for the syrup release event at Molley Chomper. Holy hot cakes! THANK YOU to everyone who showed up, especially to those of you who travelled so far to be there and try our syrup. We met many folks from the Charlotte, Greensboro, Winston, Asheville, and Triangle areas. We even spoke with a father-son duo that drove all the way from the coast, for the second year in a row, to come to this event and stock up on our syrup. We continue to be humbled and amazed by your enthusiasm for our sweet, southern syrup. As we grind through sugar season at our relatively isolated farm, we do our best to compose this newsletter to be informative and true to our experience as southern sugar makers. We then send our words out into the ether of the internet, and we wonder to ourselves, “Is anyone even reading this?” That question was answered by your turnout with a resounding “YES!” Thank you again to everyone who showed up last weekend and to those of you who could not make it to the event, but snagged some syrup in our online release the next day, and thank you to all of those reading this now for supporting our hard work and celebrating this rare and special treat of the southern Appalachians.

Wheeler, Michael and Doug at Molley Chomper.

We are officially sold out of our 2024 inventory of syrup. After the in-person event at Molley Chomper, we had only about six or seven cases of syrup to offer online, and these did not take long to be snatched up by those of you who were unable to make it out this weekend. We recognize that some of you from the syrup release event maybe did not leave with as much syrup as you may have wanted. There were just so many people there this weekend! In an effort to make sure that everyone at the event could go home with something, we quickly had to limit the purchase amount to six bottles per person. We apologize for this inconvenience, especially to all of you who drove so dang far, but it was a great feeling to see that our last customer was able to still purchase six bottles too. Many of you circled back around and purchased more at the end, so thank you for being so patient as well.


There seems to be one simple solution to our shortage of product: we need to add more taps! We intend to do just that in this off-season to come so that even more of you can share what we make. For many years, we would wait until November or December to start thinking about expanding the sugarbush. It is easy to navigate the woods in the winter when the leaves are down, and this process segues naturally into the production of actual syrup. In recent years, however, we have found that it is oh-so much easier to run our tubing through the woods when it is warm outside; the materials are easier to work with in warm weather, and this allows for more tension in the tubing, which creates smoother, more efficient lines overall. Once we finish shipping syrup out to those of you who purchased online, we will start running new lines for next year. The cycle begins again!

And to those of you who are expecting syrup in the mail, we plan to ship syrup orders this coming week.

Thanks!!

-Wheeler, Michael and Doug

Season's End

As if it happened overnight, the Red Maples are now blooming. POW! With little cold weather left in the forecast, these conditions both have brought our 2024 syrup season to an end. 

This shot was taken earlier in the season before we burned most of the firewood, but it captures the spirit of the sugar house.

Since the middle of February, we had our fingers crossed for another big sap run. It was still early in the season, and in years passed, we have seen our best runs of the year near the end, even as late as the first or second week of March. Although we did see good weather patterns, the next “Big One” never really showed up. What we lacked in volume, however, we must have made up for with consistency. Without looking at the numbers, I will say that it sure feels like we boiled a few hundred gallons every day for the last six weeks. In an effort to make the best tasting syrup, we boil the sap as soon as it comes in from the trees. We are always a little weary by the end of it, but this one seemed particularly without respite. This is what you want, in some ways, as a syrup producer, but as a mere mortal human, we are always hoping for a colder winter. Those extended, freezing temperatures are good for our maple trees, and they are also good for the maple farmer because that is when we get to take a break from boiling in the sugar house. 2024 included another fairly warm month of February, which is certainly a trend we have seen in the last few years. Another season of the same simply leaves us hoping that those long, cold winters of Ashe County are not already a thing of the past.

Doug, steam, and the evaporator. When the evaporator is up to temp, it turns about 70 gallons of water to steam in an hour.

When it was all said and done, we were surprised to see that 2024 was our second best year ever: we made 110 gallons of syrup! Up north, in New England and Canada, they measure production in terms of 55 gallon barrels filled. Well, we filled two! As funny as that sounds, this is an amazing accomplishment for us, and we are grateful to have so much to sell. It is truly astounding that such a lovely, complex, and satisfying food comes from the water in our trees here at Waterfall Farm. It feels like magic every time we fire up the evaporator. 

Although we are getting a burst of cold weather this weekend, now that our season is done we are ready to embrace sixty degree days, sunshine, birds chirping, and the flowers starting to pop out of the earth. We are ready to drink in spring and let it mend what feels withered, as we acknowledge the end of our season with weary frames, but full hearts. 

Stay tuned next week for more details about our syrup release party, March 23, at Molley Chomper. 

The 2024 Maple Syrup Season is off and running!

Wheeler, Michael, Jason and Travis read to tap trees.

First sap of the year dripping from a freshly tapped tree.

Michael, Wheeler, Travis, and Jason got out 691 taps on January 11th and 12th, just before a ten day cold-snap that came with a heavy snow. We collected a few hundred gallons of sap before that big freeze, but not enough to make finished syrup. We boiled down the sap but we were unable to fully “sweeten the pan,” so we decided it best to drain our evaporator and store our near-syrup separately so as to not damage our shiny, stainless equipment with the expansion of frozen liquid. It felt like a false start to the season to tap the trees, boil a little sap and then wait 10 days. We twiddled our thumbs and waited for a thaw while the temperatures hovered in the single digits and teens with constant snow showers and blowing snow for over a week. But… thaw it did!

Temperatures soon soared into the 60s for our first real week of syrup making, and sap poured out of the trees for four days and nights. We processed thousands of gallons of sap during this period of time. Since then, the season has kicked into high gear with great freeze-thaw cycles, and syrup is being made, bottled, and stored away on the regular. With any luck, the month of February will be full of warm days and cold nights just like this weekend.

Fist syrup of the year.

Maeve smiling as she tastes the sap. “Sweet!”

I’m not gonna lie, sugaring is a grind. All our plans are canceled this time of year as we ride the highs and lows of the season. There are a lot of long days working around rain, snow, and mud. When the sap is running, we are there to boil it! But we feel so much gratitude to get to do the work that we do. We are energized by the sweet smelling steam rising up from the evaporator, time spent working closely with family and friends, and we treasure a life entwined with the elements. It’s good to be back in the sugar house!

For info on syrup availability subscribe to our mailing to receive our newsletter.

Thanks to all who came to Molly Chomper!

We sold out of our 2023 Maple Syrup at the Molly Chomper event.

There will be no online sale.

Well folks, we are blown sideways by your turnout at Molly Chomper yesterday. Sending our warmest thanks and appreciation to all of you for taking the time to come see us and buy our maple syrup! Many of you were local, and many of your drove hours to be with us. We are humbled by your enthusiastic support.

We spend a great deal of time by ourselves out here on the farm, working at all the different tasks involved to produce maple syrup.

There’s a great deal of time spent in the woods running and repairing sap lines, and tapping and untapping trees. Our farm is on a steep, north facing slope of Three Top Mountain, and we often wear metal cleats on our boots to better grip the slippery soil under the loose leaf litter of our steepest ravines when out maintaining our sugar bush. When our feet start to slide from under us and the ground is rapidly approaching, it’s safest not to fight it, but instead accept gravity’s pull in trade for a softer landing. We fondly call these moments of prostration “being one with the ground”.

There’s a lot of time spent with earmuffs on to block out the high decibel drones of chainsaws, wood splitters, pumps, fans and the tractor. We call this muffled state the “sound cloud”. It creates a space of mental privacy to take a long ramble through your own thoughts.

The many cords of firewood needed to run our wood-fired evaporator present their own meditation. Summer’s the time to buck logs and split rounds into pieces no bigger than your forearm. It’s a repetitive process that seems to go on, and on. Doug’s method is slow and steady. He cuts, splits and stacks a tractor bucket per day. No more, no less. It gets done in good time.

In these abundant moments at Waterfall Farm, being one with the ground, wandering through the sound cloud, or stacking piece after piece of firewood, it’s easy to forget that all this work boils down to a bottle of maple syrup on your table, dear reader. We love our work and feel lucky to dot it. Seeing your faces and sending our syrup home with all of you was a fabulous counterpoint to all of the time we spend working on our own here at the farm. It is a gift for us to share our syrup and our experiences with all of you. Thanks again!

-Doug, Wheeler and Michael

We hope to see you Saturday at Molley Chomper!

We hope to see you Saturday March 25 from noon until… for our pop-up syrup event at Molley Chomper in Lansing, NC.

On Sunday March 26th at 2pm our remaining inventory of syrup will go live on our website.

All the details for the Molley Chomper event can be found here.

Wind blown

maple samaras

whirl around

willy nilly

falling where 

they may




Arriving timely,

randomly thrown,

the earth

receives them,

idling by,

a place to land.




And then!

Their seeds 

take hold.

drink the soil, 

test the sun, 

and sprout new buds.




Sapling whips 

shoot aloft reaching, 

seeking light above, 

roots below 

trees to grow.




Stout trunk 

broad limbs 

lush green leaves, 

trees unfold 

into giants 

of the realm. 




From tiny seeds 

to massive trees 

maples become, 

beauty and bounty, 

with shade to sit 

and sap to sip.




Come winter 

it’s time to tap, 

and boil and boil 

and boil and boil, 

their sweet essence 

to sugar and syrup.




So let’s remember 

to savor sweet maples, 

where we may, 

and plant them 

along the way.

It's maple planting time.

With the vernal equinox just around the corner it’s time to think about gardening and landscaping again. Tree planting in particular. The sooner the better. November is the best month to plant trees in Ashe County, but March is the next best.

And elder Sugar Maple holding court in the forest.

Sugar maples and red maples are two of the most popular landscape trees to plant around the house and along a driveway. Both transplant well and are vigorous growers. If you tune in to old farmhouses around the county you’ll notice that they very commonly have equally old sugar maple trees planted in their yards. While sugaring in these mountains seems very novel to us now, it was once common for folks to do al little sugaring in the winter. Maples need to be given plenty of room as they grow into huge trees, especially when planted out in the open. Field trees will have broad crowns and wide trunks when given full access to the sun. Maples in the forest are much taller, with smaller crowns as they live in competition with surrounding trees. Specimen maples are admired for their wide spreading form, the shade they offer and their fall color- sugar maples have golden-orange foliage, and red maples find their name from their brilliant red autumn foliage, not to mention their red flowers which are the first of the trees to bloom in spring. Best of all you can tap them to make syrup and candy. It only takes a few trees to make syrup yourself.

Red and Sugar Maples line the driveway at the bottom of the field on Waterfall Farm.

When planting your trees be sure to add phosphate to the soil as you back-fill the hole. Phosphate stimulates root growth so it is the most important nutrient at that time. Once the trees are established a balanced fertilizer will give them everything else they need. It will take a while for the root system to get established so be sure to water the trees through the heat and drought of summer and fall.

So now’s the time to plant a tree and maybe some winter in the not too distant future you’ll be boiling down sap and making your own syrup.

We hope to see you at our syrup release party on Saturday March 25th beginning at noon at Molley Chomper in Lansing NC. All the details and info about this event are available in our previous blog post. The next day, Sunday March 26th at 2:00 pm, we will make our remaining inventory of syrup available for purchase on our website. Online orders will have the option to have syrup shipped, or arrange for an in-person pick up at Waterfall Farm at a future date and time that suits both parties.

Syrup Release Saturday March 25th at Molley Chomper

With sugar making season in the rear view, we are eagerly looking forward to our syrup release party at Molley Chomper on Saturday, March 25th at noon! We hope to see you there! This is our second year hosting this event at Molley Chomper, and we have a lot of fun things in store for you.

Our entire inventory of 2023 syrup will be on hand for purchase, and we will be offering syrup tastings. During the making process, we date each case on the day it was produced so that we can track the progression of the season in each bottle. Early syrup is light in color and has a delicate, almost floral flavor. Mid season syrup is amber and has notes of caramel and marshmallow. Late season syrup is dark and deep-red in color, and has notes of brown sugar and molasses. This year we will be set-up for you to taste our syrup and note these delightful differences.

Molley Chomper makes a seasonal cider each year with our syrup which will be available at the event. Just this week they bottled last years batch of “Waterfall Farm Maple” cider. It is a blend of late-season apples including York, Stayman Winesap, and Rome. Post-fermentation, they rack the cider in oak barrels and top them weekly over three months with our syrup. The gentle secondary fermentation transforms the maple syrup, yielding a rich, sub-acid and nearly dry cider with notes of oak, vanilla, and baked apple. You can drink it right away, or it will age well if saved for a cold winter night. They will also have pours, flights and bottles of their other dazzling ciders to sample.

During the syrup release party, Doug will give an author’s talk on his book, The Trees of Ashe County. He will also give a lesson on backyard sugaring for any budding sugarers interested in tapping trees in their own backyard. For those interested, his books will be available for purchase at the event.

If you haven’t already been to Lansing, get ready to fall in love. It’s a cute little brick town built in the era of the Virginia Creeper Railway. At Old Orchard Creek General Store you will find coffee, pastries, books and friends. Next door, you can get tasty take-out pizza and salads at Pie On The Mountain to bring over to Molley Chomper and eat while you sample ciders. Also, the Lansing Creeper Trail Park has walking paths and trails, a half dozen swimming holes (extra point for the polar plungers in the group!) and a dog park. There are also some cute shops to check out on the main street. So whether you’re local, or thinking of coming from out of town, come see us and make a day of it!

Syrup will be available on a first come, first served basis. Our syrup comes in 8 oz bottles for $15/each, and case of twelve bottles is $180. We will take cash, checks, and cards. Checks payable to Waterfall Farm.

Should we end up with some crude weather on the 25th, we have a rain date for the following Saturday, April 1st. We’ll be sure to let you know of any changes in our newsletter.

Balmy temps squeeze the season.

Well, the “Big Snow” last weekend was mostly rain, with just a mini-blizzard at the end. This did cover everything with two inches of very picturesque, winter wonderland frosting. We will take what we can get.

A wet snow at the sugar house. Steam from boiling sap rises from the cupola.

The cold snap that followed the rain and snow triggered a moderate, three-day sap run. This fizzled out on Thursday when the temperatures got up into the 60’s again. By Friday, the Red Maple buds were swelling and crimson: this is the end-game for Acer Rubra. Michael and Wheeler pulled the taps from the red maples on the tail-end of the freeze on Saturday morning. Doug and Maeve stayed back and kept the fires warm on the home front. In all, 158 taps were pulled which is almost exactly twenty percent of our total taps. The 464 remaining taps are nearly all sugar maple, and they can go quite a bit longer before budding out. We left a few red maple taps in because their buds were not yet swelling. The Reds that remain are mostly understory trees. The tallest, most dominant trees and trees along the edges of fields get more sun and tend to bloom first, while the smaller trees competing for prominence bloom later.

A red maple breaking bud.

The weather forecast in the coming week has no freezing temperatures. Not. Good. Worse, it is slated to get into the 70’s on Thursday. Although a sugar maker needs temperatures above freezing for the sap to run, days this warm can affect the viability of tap holes in the maple trees. This kind of weather is somewhat unfamiliar territory so early in the season. We are going to attempt to bridge the heat wave to the next cold snap (whenever that may be) by leaving the vacuum on through the warm spell. This should, in theory, keep the taps fresh, but this strategy will only hold for so long before the holes go dry. We have done this before with success, but we need a freeze before the end of the month, or the season will be over this week.

The sap run that started Saturday will make almost pure Sugar Maple syrup so we should see some new, interesting flavors in the next batch of finished product. The sap flow was slow to get started after a low of eighteen degrees on Saturday morning, but it looks like we will be boiling on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. After that, we will see what happens.

Doug, steady at his post, stoking the fire in the evaporator.

This year’s production has been among our best early-season totals ever, but the yield for the late-season is not looking too favorable. One cannot help but ponder all of these beans in the jar from this summer… There was fog every morning, all thirty-one days of August, here at Waterfall Farm. For each one of those mornings, we added a bean to our mason jar. The old-timers tell us that those beans ought to carry-over to equal number of snowfalls in the winter. There have not been thirty-one snowfalls yet, but we suppose that winter is not over yet. If there’s anything that we have learned from sugaring, it’s that the weather in March is a wild card.

Syrup made on Valentine's Day.