Introduction

All About Wood Homestead Maple!

Wood Homestead Maple Syrup is located in the Northern Catskill Mountains in New York State. The Wood Homestead Maple Syrup business was established in 1984 by the Van Glad Family. Maple syrup is produced in late winter, early spring when the maple trees come out of hibernation. We start in mid-January, working in the sugar bush installing our pipeline system for sap collection. A small hole 5/16" in diameter is drilled 2" deep into the tree. This allows a tap (spile) to be tapped into the hole. In late February when days become above freezing, the sweet sap (looking like water) flows downhill through the pipeline system to a collection tank. Perfect sap weather is 45 degrees by day and 25 degrees by night.

Our trucks collect the roadside storage tanks and deliver the sap to our sugar house for boiling. Sap is a perishable liquid. It needs to be boiled as quickly as possible.

Every sugar house is different, in ours we have a reverse osmosis machine which takes the 2% sugar sap under 250 lbs of pressure passing it through a nano filter eliminating 75% of the water. The sap is then 8% sugar, this machine saves fuel! The sweet sap is then boil in our large evaporator. When the sap is 7 degrees above water boiling temperature (212 degrees), it is then maple syrup. We make 15 to 20 gallons of syrup per hour. The maple syrup is then filtered through 16 pieces of filter paper by way of a filter press. It is pumped into a canning unit which keeps the maple syrup at 180 degrees or hotter where we fill all different sizes of containers. 

In 2009, Wood Homestead built a new facility, making operations more energy efficient. A new maple kitchen in the building enabled us to make specialty items. We make maple candy, maple cotton candy, maple cream, ( a delicious maple spread ) and granulated delicious maple sugar.

Today, Tony and Mary VanGlad hope you enjoy our delicious maple syrup and specialty items.