About Ridge Maple

Located in scenic Hollis New Hampshire, we are a small family run maple syrup operation. We make syrup as a passion not just for profit and so we can strive to make the best syrup possible. Each season we make a little more but will not sacrifice quality and so we typically sell out before the end of the year. If you want to try really good and lovingly made maple syrup, email us at info@ridgemaple.com.

History

Our first year making maple syrup in 2010 involved one tree, one antique bucket, one grandfather, and two excited grandchildren. We collected enough sap to make about a tablespoon of syrup, but it got us hooked. See: The Blair Witch Maple Syrup video. Those two grandchildren are now in college but the grandfather is still making syrup and the younger grandchildren still help.

2023

The season started early and strangely. We usually start tapping in mid to late February. The season "starts" when the temperatures are in the 40s during the day and below freezing at night. Needless to say we spend a lot of time looking at the weather forecast. This year was somewhat been a year without a winter until February, we have only had two or three small snow storms and it was been unusually warm. Then, on February 4, New Hampshire had record cold including the coldest wind chill ever recorded (on top of Mt. Washington). The next day, the daytime temperatures got up into the 40s, with the forecast of that to continue, so the season was on! Two weeks before normal.

The new (to us) old army trailer turned out to be a very useful purchase since the Truck's rear differential blew up and was not fixed in time for the start of sap hauling. The tractor pulling the trailer did a great job, though a bit chilly running down the hill on cold mornings.

Fortunately, temperatures remained mostly stable throughout the season so boiling could be done on a reasonable schedule. We tied last year's record production.

2022

This year we added a reverse osmosis system to reduce the boiling time and save on firewood. So far so good with the new system.

We also met some new neighbors, who are very nice, and extended a tap line onto the back of their land.

Over the summer of 2022 our area of Hollis was hit with a microburst that took down many trees, including many on our our property. Unfortunately we lost several maples including the big maple that was our first tapped tree (see The Blair Witch Maple Syrup video). The back hill is a mess and still needs to be cleaned up somehow. In the meantime, many maple lines had to be rerun over fallen trees. On the bright side we are not going to be short of firewood for a long time.

2021

This was a crazy season. In terms of syrup made it was the best year ever. That was because of a combination of continuing to increase the number of taps and the very warm weather. The weather also made it an “exciting” season, culminating in a stretch of boiling for 11 out of 13 days at which point it was so warm out that the trees stopped producing sap.

The warm weather though also resulted in the loss of the “last batch” syrup. The “last batch” is a result of boiling down in a pot whatever is left in the evaporator at the end of the season. The resulting syrup is extra dark and extra flavorful and is specifically requested by some of our customers. However temperatures in the 70s resulted in the last batch spoiling before it could be boiled so it had to be thrown out.

2020

This was the first year extending the tap lines onto neighbors’ property. We talked to several nearby landowners and did some tree surveys but in the end wound up only extending the existing lines to one abutting property. However it was great at the end of the season to be able to give them syrup that came from their trees.

One of the ongoing time consuming tasks has been filtering the syrup before bottling. This year we moved from gravity filtering to a new filter press. The filter press is much quicker and results in much clearer syrup.

2019

The lost season - due to other commitments (FRC Robotics Team 1073 this means you) we were not able to make syrup this season.

On the bright side the robotics team made it to the finals of the world championships with one of the grandchildren as lead programmer and driver. HB students crush it at FIRST Worlds in Detroit

2016

Finally moved up from the homemade propane fired rig with a large pot and one pan to a real evaporator. We bought a used W.F. Mason 2x3 evaporator with a blower. After a decent amount of work moving it, rebricking it, and getting the exhaust setup, it now can boil off over 12 gallons per hour of sap.

It is also nice to be boiling indoors now in the new sugar shack.

2015

After the boiling season was over, we spent the later part of the spring and early summer building the new Ridge Maple Sugar Shack. It will be great to be in, out of the rain and snow, while boiling and will allow the whole operation to expand.

This was the first year that we made enough syrup to actually sell some of it.