We're still a month or so away from sugaring off season, when New England's maple trees are tapped and the sap boiled down to make maple syrup and maple sugar. Is there anything better for breakfast than pancakes with real maple syrup - not the corn syrup abomination you get in crappy restaurants? Yummer! And I'm also partial to maple sugar candy, with its tooth enamel piercing, diabetic coma inducing, sweetness.
I've never seen sugaring off. But I sure do like the idea of it.
Most real maple syrup in the United States comes from the Northeast, with Vermont being the Number 1 producing state.
But New Hampshire's right up there, too, and one of the farms that's still producing the real deal is North Family Farm, which Tim Meeh and his wife Jill McCullough have been doing for 50 years now, since 1974 when they took over the Meeh family farm. And now the couple is facing the facts of all life, but especially farming life:
Now 72, Meeh and McCullough won’t be able to farm forever, and the farm’s future is to be determined. Like many aging farmers in the region, the couple is facing the thorny problem of how to hand off their life’s work — a complicated task involving money, family, and a deep connection to the land.
Farmers around New England are facing this precarious situation in the top region for maple syrup production in the country. The transition to the next generation will determine how much of the region’s agricultural roots — and identity — remain intact.
Maple farming is part of a multimillion dollar industry in New Hampshire but many farms are on the brink of disappearing. As of 2022, more than 40 percent of New Hampshire farmers are over 65 years old, while only 7 percent are under 35, according to the latest Census of Agriculture by the US Department of Agriculture. And some small farms are struggling to stay in business. (Source: Boston Globe)Meeh and McCullough are hoping that one or both of their sons, Gemini and Daimon, will take over. (Gemini, huh? Ya think Meeh and McCullough might have been on the hippy spectrum back in the day?)
Certainly, Meeh and McCullough have done everything they can to keep the operation going and self-supporting.
Their operation now taps around 2,500 trees, producing about 1,250 gallons of organic syrup a year, according to Meeh. The maple syrup, maple cream, and maple candies they produce are sold online and at farmer’s markets, in addition to being distributed around the state to restaurants, grocery stores, and food co-ops. The couple has made the finances work through a diversified operation, growing hay and selling firewood in addition to making maple syrup.
Still, they're concerned about the farm's future. Over the last few years, the number of maple farm operations in NH has declined by roughly 10%, from 528 to 471.
While neither of the Meeh boys has fully declared, it sounds as if Gemini is leaning toward taking over the farm. A carpenter, hes been working the farm a few days a week.
“There’s nothing like farming,” he said. “It’s the most enjoyable and fun work that I could imagine.”I'm sure that there is nothing like farming. I'm sure there aren't a lot of professions that are more demanding and just plain bone-wearying hard. (My husband's Uncle Bill grew up on a tobacco farm in Western Massachusetts, and farmed it for many years before turning it into a golf course. Uncle Bill made no bones about how hard farming is. In comparison, running the golf course was a breeze.) Still, tapping trees, the smell of maple during sugaring off...There sure is plenty of romance associated with it.
He said he wants his young daughter to grow up around the same farm that he did.
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