 | |  | |  | |  | |  |
youngsters working on their family’s dairy farm. For fun, they tapped some maple trees in
the neighborhood, borrowed an old canning pot from their mother, built an arch of concrete
blocks and went into the syrup business.
Gradually they increased the number of trees and upgraded their equipment, and through
their college years developed a passion for making high quality syrup and other maple
products. The operation expanded significantly in 1992 when they added a sugarbush nearby
that is part of a large managed forest and invested in the new equipment needed to handle the
far-larger volume of sap to be processed into syrup.
Today the three brothers are assisted in the maple venture by their parents, Gretchen and
Steve Taylor, their wives Kelly, Liz and Cindi, and—just beginning—the next generation of
Taylors. The Taylor family continues to operate its dairy farm at the edge of Meriden
Village, with a new modern sugarhouse and maple store the focal point of the enterprise.
evaporator (above left). Compare it to them boiling in their state of the art sugarhouse in 2005 (above right).
From left Jim, Bill and Rob Taylor. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
stones into containers of sap to evaporate some of the water content and yield a sweet liquid that was
greatly enjoyed. Early settlers improved upon this activity through use of iron kettles to boil down the
sap, often to the crystalline state that provided the only form of sugar available in rural areas for
generations.
It takes about 40 gallons of sap to yield one gallon of syrup. Today production and marketing of maple
syrup are governed by federal and state regulations that dictate standards for density, color, flavor and
other attributes. The maple season in the mid-Connecticut Valley region of New Hampshire typically
begins the third of week of February and lasts until mid-April.
The flow of sap from the trees is highly dependent on the weather, with ideal conditions for a “run”
being a sunny day with a high around 42 after a night of temperatures in the low to mid-20s. Most sap
today is collected by means of networks of plastic tubing that carry the sap from the small holes drilled
in the side of the tree to the sugarhouse.
Production of high quality syrup requires close attention to cleanliness of the equipment and careful
supervision of the evaporation process. The health of the maple trees in the sugarbush, or orchard, is
also a top concern, with good forestry practices necessary to assure sustainable sap yields.
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
Bill and Jim in a 1979 Christmas Card.