Our Story
Maplewood Farm was officially founded in 2017 by the Gregg family, but the farm’s story starts a few years before that.
The sugaring tradition was started by Michael Gregg, his brothers Daniel and John, and their father Lynn in the late 1970’s. Growing up in Chatham Center, they tapped about 20 neighborhood trees using five-gallon pails and water piping which they used in lieu of a traditional spile. Forty years later some of those original spouts can still be seen in the maple trees growing along County Route 28. They gathered the sap after school and spent many long hours boiling it in the “original evaporator” – a 30-gallon steel garbage can. A few years later they graduated to using a square flat pan which they had made. The Gregg family sugaring operation continued to rely on this square pan for about the next 25 years when Joshua Gregg caught the sugaring bug and started getting involved. As Josh discovered, one of the downfalls of that square flat pan was that it was rather easy to burn. After Josh scorched the pan several times, Lynn Gregg made the executive decision to move into the 21st century and buy an actual evaporator.
In 2003 the family purchased a 2x4 Leader Evaporator from Bascom Maple Farms and never looked back. With this ‘new’ technology the farm was able to produce 10 times more syrup and continued using the 2x4 pan for about 14 years. At the end of that time Joshua purchased the current sugar house and thought that with all the additional space the operation could once again upgrade. This was done by acquiring a 2x8 evaporator and transitioning what had traditionally been a sap-bucket set up for tapping the trees to an operation that used plastic tubing which connected all the trees and directed the sap into a large holding tank. With these upgrades, the farm more than doubled production. Historically the farm had only made enough syrup to supply family and friends for the year; the upgrades however led to producing much more than necessary for family use. It was at this point the farm began selling the excess. As any sugarmaker will tell you, sugaring is an addiction and there is always room to expand and more equipment to buy.
Fast-forward to today… Maplewood Farm now runs about 1,200 to 1,500 taps, which it is able to keep up with through a reverse osmosis machine and 3.5 x 8-foot evaporator. In spite of the fact the farm has come a long way from where it has started and has stayed true to the roots and continues to be a family operation. Each spring the entire Gregg Family is involved in the sugaring process from tapping the trees to bottling and labeling the product. Even though its operation is run as a business, it continues to be a family tradition which we will pass on to the next generation.
For the Greggs, it is not just the making and bottling of a sugary treat, it is about the memories that have been made and those they continue to make each year.