BRUCETON MILLS, W.Va. — North Central West Virginia farms and small businesses are ready to welcome guests inside their establishments to see how all things with maple sugar are created.
The 10th Annual Mountain State Maple Days will take place on Saturday, February 15, where farms across the Mountain State will offer free tours and samples to show how maple sugar products are made within West Virginia. Heasley Maple Farm is among the farms and businesses that will participate, where they will showcase both their over 50-acre farm and the equipment they use to produce maple sugar-based food products on a daily basis.
“We show people how we tap the trees, when we tap them, and we talk about how the sap runs this time of year, with the freeze-thaw season,” said Heasley Maple Farm owner Keith Heasley.
Heasley Maple Farm plans to host tours starting at 9 a.m. on Saturday, where they will show off their over 50-acre farm and the equipment on it. This includes in-depth looks at the sugar bush and sugar house, which use a natural gravity tubing system to collect sap from trees before being processed in an oil-fired evaporator. According to Heasley, guests will have a chance to see how sap is collected from over 2,200 trees on their farm.
“We’re tapping 2,200 of them on our farm, and the trees are kind of in patches so that probably covers 150 acres,” said Heasley on the number of trees on their farm.
After the tour, Heasley Maple Farm employees will then present guests with some free food samples made with the maple syrup produced at the farm. Among the items that will be served by Heasley and his family will be infused flavored syrup, original hard candies, and specially made meat snacks that have become a popular mainstay for the farm in previous Maple Day events. This will be served until doors close at 5 p.m. on Saturday.
“We have some infused syrup that we started last year, some cinnamon and vanilla, we’ll be sampling all of that,” said Heasley. “And then we’re going to have the candies, the cream samples, maple walnuts, my wife makes maple walnut bread, and then we have maple bacon-wrapped smokies,” he said.
Mountain State Maple Days will also take place in March, where Heasley Maple Farm will be joined by two other maple sugar-inspired businesses in North Central West Virginia. This includes Valley Farm Products based out of Preston County near Kingwood, as well as independent producer Jamie Schuler, who operates out of Morgantown. With all vendors expected to be open on Saturday from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m., everyone at Heasley Maple Farm invites anyone interested in checking out what they do to stop by.
“We’ll show people the woods where it all starts and then use the second part of the tour, we go into the sugar house and show the equipment that we use to process,” Heasley said.