We’re Tapped In!

Sugar Season is here!

Scott spent the past couple of weeks tapping in. The sugar woods is just up the hill behind our house. We’re in the Cobequid Hills, not too far from the highest point in mainland Nova Scotia. This makes for steep hills in spots! Conditions have been pretty good for tapping - snowshoes were a “must” but happily, there wasn’t a lot of ice.

We have about 2500 taps on a gravity-fed pipeline system. Most of our sugar maples have one tap per tree; a few have two. January is typically the time to check the sugar woods for broken lines. Once repairs are done, around mid February, Scott drills a new hole in every tree and gently taps the spile into the hole. Then we wait for sap!

Since the trees have been frozen most of the winter, once the days get longer and the temperatures warmer, they begin to thaw and wake up and start drinking water through their roots to get ready for the growing season.

Today is March 10. Scott says this week’s forecast gives him hope that we may be able to collect enough sap this week to do the first boil of 2021. Time will tell. It’s a little bit stressful and exciting at the same time!

The fact that this is the first “pandemic” sugar season is very strange, for sure. It means that we won’t be having any “public” boils. How do we share this with our faithful customers who have made our maple production part of their annual spring celebration?

We’ve been facing lots of challenges since last March, as a business, like everyone else. Our 60-seat log restaurant became 30-seats, our staff went from 19 to 5, our service went from Dine-in year round, to Take-out over the last couple of months. The silver lining? We hired an awesome new chef last fall and Mike is doing things we’ve always wanted to do with maple and local ingredients like Berkshire pork, playing with smokey, sweet and salty components.

Beginning March 20, the first day of spring on the calendar, we’re reintroducing our Maple Magic package with a Sat/Sun 9:00 reserved, prepaid, all-inclusive experience including Pancake Brunch, an outdoor tour and sugar-on-snow. Go HERE to book!

And in the meantime, plan on coming up to visit anytime between 10 and 3 Sat/Sun for
- Contactless Take-out (view awesome Menu HERE)
- Curbside Shopping (preorder HERE to have it ready when you arrive)
- Snowshoe rental (go HERE to reserve)
- Sugar-on-snow ($2/stick, cash only - drop in all day)

And be sure to sign up for our e-newsletter so that you can be the first “in the know” about upcoming events and additions like
- Chef Night at Sugar Moon
- outdoor seating
- increased Dine-in openings
- new menu items

Happy spring to all! We’ll keep you posted about the season!

*All photos by Christine Whelan