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