Sweet Maple is an instructional book on backyard sugarmaking that’s also the story of one family’s connection to the past on a small New England sugar farm. Throughout its pages, Michelle (the “sugarmaker’s wife”) gives advice on: the 22 different kinds of trees that can be tapped. the process of making syrup, to help you decide what level is right for you. how to make alternative treats, such lilac syrup. the health benefits of maple products, which contain more than 40 antioxidants. substituting processed sugar with all-natural maple syrup in any recipe. the 3 steps to making maple sugar. how to make irresistible maple cream and how to enjoy it. While learning the art of sugarmaking alongside her husband, Michelle guides readers through every step of all-natural syrup production, with directions for tapping one tree or dozens, while detailing the life-changing benefits of using maple syrup in the kitchen.Interspersed with sugaring techniques, tips, sidebars, and storytelling, Michelle shares more than 30 of her family’s tried-and-true maple recipes—from scones to salads.

Like many North American industries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the business of making maple sugar and syrup went through a period of maturation and modernization. Much of this change and new business model was influenced and controlled by one man and the company he created in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. George C. Cary and the Cary Maple Sugar Company grew in size and influence such that it controlled as much as 80 percent of the bulk maple sugar market, bestowing on Cary the title of Maple King and St. Johnsbury as the Maple Capital of the World. This book recounts the rise of the Cary Company and takes a closer look at who Cary was and the maple sugar and maple syrup empire that he created. As encompassing as the Cary Empire was, it overreached its limits and came tumbling to the ground with the stunning bankruptcy and death of its leader in 1931. However, Cary's legacy did not die with him, and as told here, St. Johnsbury continued to have a significant place and role in the ever-evolving maple sugar and syrup industry.

"This book tells the history of how, from 1896 to 1908, Abbot Augustus Low and his Horse Shoe Forestry Company carved an industrial landscape out of the Adirondack forests of northern New York state, complete with railroads, electrification, mills, dams, a private camp, and the centerpiece maple syrup operation. Exploiting a sugarbush of 50,000 taps using a network of pipelines to carry sap from the woods to collection points and boiling sap on nearly twenty colossal evaporators in a series of syrup plants, the Horse Shoe Forestry Company's maple syrup operation was a novel attempt at making maple syrup in the Adirondack wilderness on a scale never before experienced. In time the landscape of A.A. Low's private estate changed hands and uses, but as this book shares, the archaeological remains of the story of the Horse Shoe Forestry Company can still be found on the land"--

Presents a beginner's guide to the process of making maple syrup, from tapping the trees to cooking and bottling the syrup, including cooking with evaporators, grading the syrup, building a sugarhouse, pricing, and marketing.