The BEST maple farm tour in VERMONT 🍁 (+ trying creemees!)

i'd say it was a pretty sweet first day here in vermont literally oh that's really good oh [Music] we have officially made it to new england visiting new england in the fall has been a goal of ours for years and we are so pumped to spend the next month visiting a few different new england states checking out small towns seeing fall foliage going for hikes and so much more and to kick off our new england adventures we're spending this week in vermont and today we are experiencing the number one thing we think of when we think of vermont maple syrup vermont is the largest maple syrup producer in the united states with just over 2 million gallons produced last year over half of the total of production for the u.s and today we're going on a free tour of beard farm which is a maple farm in central vermont and has been in the baird family for over four generations although it's not sugaring season which typically starts in late february and goes for four to six weeks and that's when maple syrup is actually made we're gonna hopefully still learn all about the process to make maple syrup and most importantly try some treats [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] this is jacob and today he's going to teach us all about maple syrup and beard farm bird farm has been in the family since 1918 and started as a dairy farm but in the mid-90s the farm shifted to maple syrup as the primary crop and is now home to almost 14 000 sugar maple trees there are many different types of maple trees for the most part we tap these trees sugar maple trees right which a lot of people associate with like the fall because they turn bright reds and oranges and yellows we're certified organic here so we have to add by stricter standards than most farms when it comes to like forest management practices right and we want to wait until a tree is maybe 11 12 inches in diameter before we start tapping it maybe that tree is then 25 30 years old it really varies like this tree probably looks older than it is kind of how some people look older how do trees make energy photosynthesis right big science word photo meaning light right the leaves are like little solar panels and they dance in the sun and they take in co2 and they put out oxygen as part of that process they're making a little nuggets of energy little nuggets of carbohydrate sucrose right that's where the sugar from maple is found it gets smashed together with water content that the tree brings up from the roots folks call that transpiration um in science and it's the dumb down 101 version of like what is sap in the winter time most of this happens hanging out in the base of the tree like the lower trunk and the roots of the tree right and when it freezes and thaws and freezes and thaws in this late winter early spring right um things expand and contract think about ice in your freezer right there's a pressure dynamic there right as things freeze and thaws and they expand and contract the sap and also gas there's a lot of gas in a tree fun fact about trees it gets forced up that xylem 13 726 trees so it takes us weeks and weeks and weeks to tap all these trees what do i mean by tapping trees let's back up tapping trees this quick snapshot of the season we drill 13 hundred and twenty six holes into these trees every year every year fresh whole every year we pound a tiny little spigot or a spout or a tap into that hole and then we fix the tubing onto the spout then we'll go drip drip drip out that wound down this tubing down these lines that are all plumbed on a slope to lead to larger and larger lines these larger lines then go into tanks in one of the pump houses where the sap is then pumped up to the sugar house and goes into another tank and if you kept sap in a tank and it's getting hot towards april it gets a little funky right um so we want to work with the past the best maple syrup whether you're in minnesota or vermont or quebec is in a tree and it's in a barrel as fast as you can move it right this tank holds like 6 500 gallons right we boil when this tank fills and this tank can fill really fast on a good day this year this tank can fill up in like two three hours right and so we can do that over and over and over again it's like a river of sugar water coming off the mountain so you need to move it because it will overflow your like your bathtub right and so from here we talked about this we hinted about it we use reverse osmosis machines remember high school bio class someone alex does maybe he nodded yes how it works is like there's really fine filters high density well really kind of like fine micron rapid membranes and you force sap through it and clean h2o can pass through these really fine filters but everything else can't like all the particulates you end up separating like the sugars right and the minerals everything else we love about maple syrup so from here you get two things you get a lot of clean water and you get a little bit of concentrated sap then we pump the concentrated septic tanks up there see there's more tanks up there there's about 25 000 gallons of liquid storage here and then we run it into a machine like this these are big burners like big flame throwers that shoot flames out underneath right there's different pants with baffles and flues and so as it comes the concentrated sap at this point it's not two percent after the reverse osmosis machine we're boiling typically maybe eighteen to twenty percent concentrated sap here then it will boil and bubble and steam right you create a flow so as you feed it more sap it gets thicker and thicker and thicker maple syrup occurs generally at 219 degrees fahrenheit when the sugar density reaches 66.9 percent which is determined by a hydrometer it is then filtered and whatever syrup they do not sell to the bulk market is bottled for their store from getting the sap from the trees to bottling it takes about 45 to 55 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup and for the final part of the tour we're going to try four different grades of maple syrup ranging from light to dark which is determined by when in the season it is made it's all like personal preference on whether you like a light syrup or a dark syrup this here we're trying right now is called golden delicate it's kind of light and subtle and passive in its mapley-ness from here it will only get more kind of like caramely and multi-ish [Music] this one's called amber rich which survey says is the most popular one syrup mostly to make a big you know like so when you reach one even better it tastes like turkey oh my gosh this tastes just like pancakes this is so good like basic nature facts like a kernel of corn is like a sugar dance let's tell you it's getting better and better to make sugar syrup just a stronger flavor tastes different but i can't say why i don't know darker and robust that last one we tried dark robust jenna's favorite it's normally what we have in the fridge it's like a good versatile syrup lots of times a darker syrup is marketed as like a cooking syrup because it just has stronger flavors right this one is the strongest one we make it's called very dark straw well it's not the strongest syrup we make but it's the strongest europe we're allowed to sell to folks like you technically you can't sell that really late season syrup to consumers uh folks locals call that buddy syrup or ropey syrup the season really ends when it stops freezing and the buds come out because when the buds come out the energy inside this half go towards leaf production and uh that wound is healing up so you get less drips per sap per spout and the sap that we are collecting gets a little beezy kind of like we talked about right this is the one like a lot of younger vermonters or new englanders will just tell you is the best dudes tend to like it more too there's like a machismo thing that happens or something puts hair on your chest it tastes like almost like chocolatier yeah rustier like sometimes it almost has like a bite on it it has a different flavor so like that molasses i like the stronger and stronger not everybody they're all so good it's got like flavor instead of just sugar yeah those are the four main grades golden amber dark very dark in addition to that we make these infused syrups um the new trendy thing to do in maple land is to like stick vanilla beans and maple syrup or cinnamon or things like that we make two infused syrups that come from stuff we do that we forage like spruce tips and mint leaves it smells a little different spruce tips a lot of these are also geared towards like the cocktail marker oh wow or the island it's good taste that rosemary it's really good the mint we go out and we cut 66 quarts of wild spearmint from the pasture and then we hot steep it in a drum of maple syrup so it gets like it turns into like a liquid andy's mint bar essentially means maple syrup it smells like mouthwash i'm not a big mint fan but i could do that that's good um i think we all try to do everybody trying to be super good with like a dessert there'll be more [Music] we had such a hard time deciding which maple syrup to buy every single one was so delicious but we went with the dark robust which is the second darkest one going into the tasting i thought i'd like the lightest one the best it just tasted so sweet i was like how does it get better than this but each one got tastier and tastier and they all taste different but it's really hard to explain how they taste different they just do and the infused ones are really really good too but the tour was just so much fun and educational you learn so much about the behind the scenes of what goes into making this product that you know and love but this is the legit stuff it was really cool to see the care and craftsmanship that goes into this and it's a one ingredient product it's just the sap that's boiled down turned into maple syrup but there's so much work that goes into making this one ingredient product it was just really really interesting to learn about and jacob was hilarious so such a fun tour so big thank you to jenna and jacob for letting us film the tour and just teaching us so much about this this is probably like the most like true authentic vermont experience we could start out so yeah but our maple syrup adventures are not quite over for the day i have a huge sugar rush right now but we're not stopping yet okay but before we continue our maple syrup adventures jenna was telling us about this giant pumpkin growing subculture worldwide where people just grow massive pumpkins this time of year and hers didn't end up growing very big this year last year it was almost a thousand pounds but her friend is bringing over his 875 pound pumpkin so we're gonna wait around a bit and try to see it because i can't even fathom how huge that is [Music] there's not one but there are two giant pumpkins here holy cow [Music] correction it is 8.95 [Music] [Applause] it's not every day you get to see an 895 pound pumpkin we had really good timing that was super cool to see but now it's on to more maple deliciousness [Music] [Applause] [Music] so maple syrup isn't just consumed in its purest form here in vermont it's also popular as a frozen treat called a creamy which is basically just soft serve ice cream you get it in different flavors but maple creamies are all the rage we just drove 30 minutes north of baird farm to a place called vermont maple market to try our first ever maple creamy [Music] all right a plus k fashion ice cream fashion it's melting but we got two large maple creamies with a maple crunch candy on top and there's a bee attacking us all right it's dripping oh yeah oh my god crunchy with the maple candy on there it's like a subtle like sweet maple flavor it tastes just so good it doesn't taste like artificial yeah like super overpowering it's sweet but it's not like like the doing just maple syrup is super sweet obviously but this just has like a subtle creamy sweetness perfect balance of sweet just creamy we're now covered in maple products we have sticky fingers i've got drippage here for my maple syrup chugging photo shoot we did for the thumbnail of this video and we have a little bit of a sugar coma but i'd say it was a pretty sweet first day here in vermont literally we're now gonna head north to stay at a harvest host farm and then tomorrow we're gonna get up and explore the city of burlington we sleep in a lot of cracker barrels don't knock the crack don't knock them it's our home yeah liz fast draw and a good listener 15 points yeah i think that one's worth twenty you know you don't win anything but it keeps it competitive but like squirrels and chipmunks are like the nemesis yeah good vocab that's a t word 20 points nemesis yeah your face said it all i just think like squirrels that chipmunks are the worst honestly they're just like look a little more killed this morning that's right i'm trying to help you out i'm trying to help you out sugaring is basically like outdoor plumbing is like the unromantic way to think about it adam knows about this because he has a nature's head composting toilet but [Music] [Music]