Farm Blog

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.

Big Snow might be on it's way, or not!

February 8th syrup. Perfection!

If we are being honest, it hasn’t really felt much like winter before or during this Sugar Season, except of course for that whopping cold snap around the holidays. Perhaps much of that feeling has been in response to the lack of snow showers here in the mountains. We might be jealous of the weather that our fellow sugar makers get on the regular up north, but it just feels right when you approach the sugar house in the morning with snow on the ground. It somehow adds to the magic of this whole thing.

Behind the scenes….

Well, that big snow that we’ve been looking for might be on its way, or not! As we all know, Mother Earth’s weather systems can be unpredictable, have a change of heart, and do a one-eighty in a moments notice. According to who you talk to, we are in for somewhere between 2 and 30 inches tomorrow. Ha! That said, we have our fingers crossed for The Big One, and we’re doing what we can to ensure it’s happening. We are not walking under any ladders, and we are absolutely avoiding black cats (except for Giuseppe). If it makes any difference, we say let it snow, A LOT!

As for recent activity here at Waterfall Farm, the week began with a full moon and a sap gush on Sunday morning, February 5th. This first big run of the season blew wide open, and by Monday morning, the tanks were full and we were fast-stepping to keep pace with the sap run. Another light freeze snuck in on Tuesday morning to boost the waning flow all the way to Thursday’s heat wave. Here we saw temperatures soar into the 60s this week, which, after several days without a freeze, shuts down the sap run like turning off a faucet. For this reason, we don’t like to see temperatures above 50 degrees this early in the year. Anything over this mark is considered a “growing-degree-day,” and each of these days brings a swell to our maple buds as they prepare to break open and flower in the spring. Once this happens, the chemistry in the sap changes to a point that it no longer makes the sweet and delicious syrup that we all know and love. You could still make and eat it at this point, but you will not be too happy about what’s in your mouth.

This morning, the high clouds started rolling in and the temperatures had dropped back into the thirties. With much of our operation out-of-doors, these swings in temperature create a steady mandate for maintenance and repairs. As we write this newsletter, we are in the middle of trouble-shooting an unexpected drop of vacuum pressure in the tubing system and double-checking that our systems are all ready for the freeze- a flurry of activity as we all anxiously await whatever comes next.

February Syrup

Wheeler, Maeve, Michael and Doug in the sugar house.

A year ago today, February 4th, we made the first maple syrup of the 2022 season. This year we are beginning our third week of sugaring with 34 gallons of syrup in the till from January’s early sap run. What a great start to our season! Who are we to quarrel with the nature of nature?

This morning the temperature was 17 degrees and the only thing running was the cat in the yard. The ponds are frozen over and the trout are idling in slow motion below the ice filmed ponds. Unlike yesterday, the temperature should get above freezing today, but not for long. There might be a trickle of a sap run this afternoon but it’ll just be a tease. The next three or four days are looking like sugaring weather. Highs in the low 50s and lows in the 30s.

Doug stands between the ponds. Trout drift below the ice.

Early February syrup.

The golden hued, fruity syrup of January faded on the last boil as a red hued syrup with strong notes of marshmallow began to emerge. We expect each sap run from now on to give syrup whose amber hue gradually darkens as the chemistry of the sap makes its way towards spring, with notes of butterscotch, vanilla and caramel showing up as the days get longer.

We sure would like to see a big snow but there’s none in the forecast right now. Some of the best sap flows come after a heavy snow and a deep freeze. But it’s early yet, and we’ll try to sweet talk Mother Nature for now.

Date Change for Molley Chomper Event

We sugar at the whim of the weather.

***Due to a splash of wintery weather coming in this weekend, we have decided to postpone our Molley Chomper event from Saturday March 12 to Saturday March 19. We hope to see you on the 19th from 3-6 for syrup, hard cider, and hard cider made with syrup!***

Red maple in bloom marks the end of our season.

On Friday, March 4th, the last drops of sap were boiled off from that week’s sap run to end the 2022 maple syrup season here on Waterfall Farm. With temperatures soaring in the upper 60s and the red maples breaking bud and beginning to bloom, it was time to call it a year. The season was short and sweet. The freezes and thaws came like clockwork for 32 days and in the final tally we totaled 84.25 gallons of delicious maple syrup. Once again our beautiful maple trees shared their sweet sap with us to boil into precious syrup and for that, we are grateful.

With the addition of the reverse osmosis machine to our tool kit, we are proud to say we reduced our carbon footprint this year by two thirds! Last year, without RO, we made 85 gallons of syrup and we burned 6 cords of wood to boil it down. This year we made almost exactly the same amount of syrup but it required only 2 cords of wood. We can’t wait to not cut so much firewood going forward!

Michael and Sara boiling and bottling syrup.

We have refrained from selling syrup during our sugar making season this year. We are so consumed with the work of making syrup, that we have learned over the years that we don’t have time to properly turn our attention to moving syrup out the door. Now that we have boiled our last for the year, we are ready to start sending syrup in your direction!

Our first syrup availability will be an in-person event at Molley Chomper cidery in Lansing, NC on Saturday March *19th from 3-6. Please note that this is a NEW date for this event! Due to inclement weather on our original date of Saturday March 12th, we’ve decided to postpone till the following weekend, Saturday March 19th from 3-6 pm. We hope to see you there!

We are also excited to announce our online syrup release date which will be Sunday March 20th at 3pm.

Wheeler and Maeve in the sugar house.



Mark Your Calendar!

Mark your calendar for our first syrup availability of the year on Saturday, March 12th March 19th!! (Update! Due to inclement weather we have postponed this event from the 12th to Saturday March 19.) We will be selling syrup in person at Molley Chomper cidery in Lansing, NC from 3-6! Syrup will be available both by the bottle and by the case. This is our only in-person event on the books this season, so come to Lansing and make a day of it! Pick up a pizza from Pie on the Mountain and bring it over to Molley Chomper to eat while you sample their amazing array of hard ciders made with locally sourced ingredients and farm collaborations including a syrup/cider colab with Waterfall Farm which will be available on tap and by the bottle. And don’t miss Old Orchard Creek General Store where you will find Hatchet coffee, Stick Boy pastries, and a lovely curation of books and gifts!

For the past couple of years, Molley Chomper has been making a special barrel aged cider with our syrup called Waterfall Farm Maple. 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 Waterfall Farm maple syrup. This gentle secondary fermentation transforms the maple syrup yielding a rich, sub-acid and near-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. This is a dry cider, and the addition of sugar from the syrup in the secondary fermentation bumps this cider to 10% abv which technically makes this an apple wine rather than a cider.

Maeve and Michael at the end of a boil. You can see the days haul bottled and cooling on the back wall.

Today is the 22nd of February and the season has been as perfect as it gets. The freeze and thaw cycles, the high and low barometric pressure, and the snow and rain have all come as if we ordered it that way. Mother Nature has been very cooperative and has us smiling about the forecast for the next ten days.

The new reverse osmosis machine is everything we hoped it would be and more. Here at midseason we have only used 1.25 cords of firewood. That is less than half what we have used by this time in past years. It has also sped up our time boiling and cleaning up, and we are very happy to reduce our carbon footprint!

The early syrup was lite and golden, but short lived. Now it has turned a velvety red and is yummy with hints of vanilla and butterscotch, the distinctive flavor of Waterfall Farm maple syrup coming out of our unique amphibolite soil.

Yesterday Michael boiled a small sap run, about 300 gallons, from the weekend to get ahead of a big run anticipated last night. We didn’t want the tanks overflowing by morning. There was rain moving in and the sap always flows stronger with the low pressure that comes with it. We have about 600 gallons of sap on hand today to boil through. This is sugar season!

2022 Sugar Season is Here!

We’ve made some expansions here on the farm in the last year. We completed an addition on our sugar house, and we’ve welcomed a third generation sugarer to our family! Maeve was born April 19th to Wheeler and Michael. We were scurrying to ship out cases of syrup last spring in the weeks before she was born. We could go on and on about the joy this sweet girl brings us, but we will stick to topic and tell about our farm news.

The expansion of the sugar house was completed last summer. Many thanks to Nate Gardiner for his prowess in the construction of the new addition. Nate and Michael built a 224 square foot addition to the back of the sugar house creating a storage room, a heated room for the new reverse osmosis machine, and expanded roof and platform area sheltering the 340 gallon tank that feeds the evaporator.

The addition of the reverse osmosis (RO) machine is the last major tool we will need in our bag of tricks making maple syrup. The RO machine is a filtration system that removes a quotient of pure water from the sap, leaving us with higher sugar content in the sap before we even begin to boil. It reduces our carbon footprint by more than half (yay! for less firewood), it speeds our boiling time and makes it possible to expand the number of trees we can tap in the future. This is a standard piece of equipment on large maple farms, and something we have had our eye on for the past 10 years. It’s a big win for us in the sugar house!

Wheeler and Michael, with the help of Mallory Michael, began tapping the trees on January 27th this year. There was still a frozen crust of snow when we began, and we took advantage of that by putting crampons on our boots and tackled the steepest sections of the forest. The crampons plus hard snow made for great traction in the steep ravines. We got through more than half of the taps on the first day, but then we were pressed indoors by snow and a deep freeze for a few days, and wrapped up tapping when temperatures warmed with the help of Thomas Carlson who flew in from Oklahoma to help us kick off the season. Thanks Mallory and Thomas for tromping around in the woods with us!

This past week we made our first syrup of the season. It is light, golden and delicious! The earliest syrup is always the lightest in color, and most delicate and mild in flavor. As the season progresses, the syrup darkens and the flavors become more complex and maple-y.

If you are interested in purchasing syrup this year, then you should subscribe to our newsletter. Subscribers will get first dibs on syrup when its available. We will have three release dates for syrup TBA in the newsletter this year. Don’t miss out! The syrup goes fast.

Season's End and Hard Cider Collaboration with Molley Chomper (Copy)

Michael and Doug bottling syrup.

Michael and Doug bottling syrup.

The 2021 maple syrup season at Waterfall Farm came to an end on a spring like day on March 10th. The syrup on the last day was so rich and sweet we were afraid it might awaken the bears from hibernation. If they had gotten a whiff wafting up the mountain they might have torn the doors off the sugar house to get at it.

The season began on January 27th during a brief thaw where the snow melted allowing our merry band of tappers to get out there and tap the trees. As soon the trees were tapped the temperature dropped like a rock and it began to snow. The world remained frozen and we didn’t see any sap until February 5th when the temperature squeaked up into the 40s for a few hours and gave us enough sap to “sweeten the pan”, but not a drop more. Then we had to hurry up and wait until February 9th when temperatures began to cycle between freezing and thawing and the maples’ sap cut loose from the trees at such regular intervals that we were boiling nearly every day. From there it was a race to the finish on March 10th when we had our final boil- our season ended by an extended forecast of spring-warm temperatures with no freezing in sight.

Red maple blooming.

Red maple blooming.

Mother nature pulls all the strings of winter and this year she showed off all her most intricate moves. This was the coldest winter that we’ve had in a number of years, and you may have noticed that the flowers and new green of spring have been late to show themselves this year. If you pay attention in early spring, you will see that red maples are among the first native trees to bloom, offering a red blush dappling the landscape. The bloom time of the red maples is dictated not by a single warm stretch, but by the cumulation of warm and cold days throughout winter. We stacked a lot of cold days this winter, and this is why the bloom was late. In recent years, our season has ended because the red maples bloom, so it was a new twist this year to find our finally in simple warm weather with no blooms around to speak of. Blooming trees are a season-ender because the blooms cause the chemistry of the sap to change yielding off flavor syrup. This year, our season was ended by warm weather simply because that warmth will sour the sap in our lines.

We truly appreciate all of the enthusiastic interest in our syrup, as well as the warm wishes and kind words that you all have showered up on us this season. A lot of you are new to us this year having found us through the October 2020 issue of Our State magazine. Welcome!! We are a small family farm, quietly tucked away on the side of a mountain, and it’s a privilege to share our syrup and our story with you.

Thanks for your patience and for following along with our somewhat awkward system of reserving syrup by the case. This was our first year offering syrup in this way, and we were caught off guard by the landslide of interest that came our way. We are already refining our system so that we can offer a smoother, more straightforward experience for purchasing syrup next year.

At this point, we are officially sold out of syrup.

Over the last several weeks we have been connecting directly with customers who have reserved syrup by the case, and have been doing so in the order that reservations were made. If you have not heard from us yet then I am sorry to say that we will not be able to fill your reservation or waitlist request. We wish we had enough syrup for all of you but make a limited amount of syrup each year. If you hope to get your hands on syrup next year then stick with our newsletter. This is our primary contact point for sharing information about syrup availability and farm updates.

It was a great year to make syrup in spite of Covid19. We missed having visitors but look forward to seeing some of you in the sugar house in 2022.

If you would like another way to experience Waterfall Farm maple syrup and explore the North Carolina mountains then take note!

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Just a few miles down the road from our farm in Lansing, NC is one of Ashe County’s gems, Molley Chomper- an award winning cidery that hand crafts scrumptious, delicious hard ciders featuring local heirloom apples and showcasing special collaborations with farms in our area. They take the sweetness of spring, the irrepressible high of summer in the mountains, the sharpness and spice of autumn, and the heat of a fire in winter, and somehow manage to put it all in a bottle. For two years now, they have been making a special barrel aged cider with our syrup called Waterfall Farm Maple. 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 Waterfall Farm maple syrup. This gentle secondary fermentation transforms the maple syrup yielding a rich, sub-acid and near-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.  This is a dry cider, and the addition of sugar from the syrup in the secondary fermentation bumps this cider to 10% abv which technically makes this an apple wine rather than a cider.

Molley Chomper features other delectable farm collaborations to explore such as Old Orchard Creek Blueberry, Carpenter Hill Raspberry, and Honey Lavender to name a few. They also have more traditional hard ciders that are endlessly delicious and smooth such as Mountain Maelstrom and Bent Apple.

If you’re in the area and spoiling for adventure, you can visit their taproom and enjoy a socially distanced beverage fireside on their covered patio, or visit one of their many stockists throughout North Carolina. If you’re stuck at home and spoiling for adventure, fear not, they ship!