The 2024 season has officially started, today we started drilling at our home property! We intended to start last week but decided to postpone due to the wind, precipitation, and warm temperatures. All spouts/droplines have been prepped and mainlines have been walked so we should progress faster than usual. With any luck we’ll have all of our taps in this year before we even started last year (February 6th)!

If you’ve ordered maple candy this holiday season, you may have noticed something different in your box. In addition to the standard small and large maple leaf shapes, we now have our own custom Nova candy mold! Back in October we 3d printed ~75 plastic copies and set them in two part silicone. We currently have three mold sheets that we use with every batch.

In other news we’re finishing up prepping in the woods right now. If the weather cooperates we’ll start tapping next week!

For this year’s annual cookie exchange that I participate in, I decided to put a maple twist on the classic thumbprint cookie. Instead of filling the thumbprint with jam, I used our maple cream, and topped each one with a maple roasted pecan. They turned out to be a hit!

Are there any recipes you’ve added a maple twist to recently? If so, please share in the comments!