Autumn at Windswept Maples is often a time for thankless jobs like cleaning and storing equipment, doing maintenance on buildings, and getting barns ready for the animals returning from pasture. These jobs aren’t flashy but they’re critical tasks for ensuring our equipment and structures stay in good working order and function as needed in the coming year. Doing these types of jobs now enables us to maximize our time on other more visible things that make the farm go the rest of the year. Amidst these thankless jobs this fall, Jeff took home a highly visible recognition of all the hard work that goes into running a diversified family farm. At the recent NH Farm Bureau Annual Meeting, Jeff received NH’s Young Farmer Achievement...
Summer is in full swing at the farm and we’re starting to reap the benefits of this year’s steady mix of sunshine and natural irrigation (rain). While it’s been tough to string together long stretches of dry weather to harvest hay, the bale totals have been strong this year. Folks who have driven by the farm have seen the white stack of wrapped round bales grow significantly and we’ve been delivering square bales all over the local area. Even when we’re not mowing, drying, or baling hay in the summer there is lots happening at the farm. Here’s a quick update on a few other notable summer items: For the third year in a row there are honey bees at...
As spring shows up in New Hampshire the focus at our farm shifts to the growing season. The fields change to a bright green and the trees in the forest unfurl their various buds, blossoms, and leaves. Animals head out of the barn onto pasture and field work begins getting the soil ready for vegetables, corn, and all the other things we hope to harvest over the summer and autumn. Below is a quick roundup of what's happened on the farm in April & May this year: A windy winter tore apart the plastic shell on our greenhouse so several days were spent this spring rebuilding one end wall and re-stringing the plastic that will create prime growing climate for our tomato plants. The...
All of us at Windswept Maples Farm are pleased to announce the launch of our new website at windsweptmaples.com. While we were one of the first NH farms on the web, the original site had become woefully dated compared today’s technology. This new, modern site will help us better share our story and the fruits of NH farming with folks near and far. Here are some highlights of what visitor to the site will find: First, we've added the ability to securely purchase maple products online and ship them anywhere in the U.S. We accept all major forms of credit cards as well as Paypal. For those who had previously followed our separate blog site, all of that content (and much more to come) can be found right here on the...
In January 2016, all of the maple producing regions including Canada and the US are now required to use the new grading system. It's taken a few months for us as well to acquaint ourselves with the new terms for each grade. We now use the terms, Golden, Amber, Dark Robust, and Very Dark to describe the different grades of pure maple syrup. The poster above created by the NH Maple Producers Association shows how the old and new descriptive grade terms compare. We have some flyers to help you become familiar with the new grades. Hope to see you soon. We do not have any Very Dark Syrup on hand, but we do have all other grades.
