A WALK IN THE WOODS

Strolling through our woods is always a treat with well defined trails in a forest groomed for 125 years. You will see the blue lateral lines attached to each maple tree with a dropline and spout. The sap is gently drawn from each maple tree with vacuum and sent to the pumping station via a main blue line. There are pleasant surprises along the way as with any healthy woods where wildlife and beauty flourish.

The Pumping Stations

The Pumping Stations are the gathering points for the sap and as it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup these stations are critical. The Pumping Stations are equipped with temperature sensing controls that turn the vacuum system on when the temperature rises above freezing during the day and then turns itself off when the temperature drops at night.

The Syrup House

As the sap travels from the pumping station to the Syrup House it is stored in large stainless tanks for cooking in the Syrup House. Roughly 2/3 of the water is extracted using a reverse osmosis process. From there using gravity the sap concentrate goes to our Maple Hollow wood fired evaporator for cooking. When the steam from the cooking sap rises it fills the Syrup House with the sweet aroma of maple. As the syrup reaches proper density it streams through filter presses and then is stored in food grade drums. The drums are then stored in our naturally cooled facility beneath our sales and canning building.

The Canning Room

Canning our gourmet syrup products occurs year round in our Canning Room. The syrup is heated, filtered again and bottled into various containers for retail orders and inventory. In addition to our pure gourmet maple syrup we also produce maple blended pancake syrups, maple cream, maple butter, maple sugars and honeys.

Showroom and Sales

The Sales and Show Room displays our extensive variety of gourmet maple syrup products, honey products, cookbooks and more. Maple Hollow also provides the equipment to maple producers to satisfy their production needs. Many of the evaporators, reverse osmosis machines and other equipment are on display in our showroom.

The Antique Sleigh

Please stop and check out our Antique Sleigh that was used by the Polak Brothers for many years during the spring. When it was time to gather the maple sap during the run, the Lumber Mill would slow; everyone would help with the gathering. The buckets would be emptied into the tank and the horses would draw the full tank to the Cook House and then return to the woods for another haul.