Our pure maple syrup is made right here in Woodville, Massachusetts, a village of Hopkinton. We tap our trees each February, depending on weather conditions and collect it daily - mostly by hand. Between 40 and 60 gallons of sap need to be boiled down to make one gallon of maple syrup. Each batch is graded for flavor and color. The beginning of the season typically yields light, delicate-flavored syrup. As the season progresses, the color usually darkens and the maple flavor strengthens. The trees and the weather decide what we’ll get.
Likewise, our bees live in Woodville foraging on the abundant wildflowers in our area. We typically harvest in the late spring and then again in the early fall. Each season offers its own unique and local flavor. The spring honey is typically golden and floral. The fall honey is usually dark and sweet, almost like candy. We always have samples of our maple syrup and honey on our market days, so come by and give them a try to find the one that’s right for you!
We’re actually not the first maple syrup producers in Woodville. Native people were making maple sugar long before the Europeans arrived. The Nipmuc people living here called it Magwonkkommok or Magunco, meaning "place of great-trees."
In 1861, Woodville resident and hero Henry Newton Comey was away in Maryland fighting for the Union in the Civil War. He missed the comforts of his home in Woodville very much and on Christmas Eve closed his letter to his family with:
In the late winter of 2006, unaware of Woodville’s sugaring past, we got the idea to make maple syrup from the many sugar maple trees in our yard. We started out with ten taps and boiled over an open fire outside. There were a lot of cold, wet hours outside in those early years, but we were hooked.
The hobby quickly became an obsession and we have been expanding ever since. We built a sugarhouse and currently have over 300 taps. Most of the buckets have been replaced with tubing and we've added vacuum to the lines. We continue to boil over a wood fire, though now it's in a 2'x6' evaporator. In 2012, we started keeping bees. Like sugaring, things got big quickly. We make a lot of maple syrup and honey now - more than we could ever eat. That's where you enter our story!
If you would like to purchase our products outside of our market days, you can arrange for a porch pickup. Simply email or text us your order (it helps us when your order is in witing!) and we'll let you know the details of how you can pick it up. We spend most of our time with the bees and trees, so please give us a day or two to get back to you.
Text us at
(508) 341-5108 or
Email us at: woodvillemaples@verizon.net
During the sugaring season we collect the sap from over 300 taps here in Woodville and other parts of Hopkinton. Each day, hundreds of gallons of sap are brought back to the sugar house to be boiled. Maple sap can spoil, so it’s important to boil it right away. The pans are filled and the fire is lit. Maple sap is around 2% sugar and 98% water. Pure maple syrup is about 67% sugar, so we have to boil off most of the water. That makes for a lot of steam and a lot of hours in the sugarhouse every day. If the weather is right, we get to do it all over again the next day. Our best seasons are about five to six weeks long. It’s exhausting, but one taste makes it worth all the effort!
