Barred Woods Maple

From Taps to Bottle, How Maple Syrup is Made

Barred Woods Maple is an organic and ecologically conscious maple sugaring business located in northern Vermont. They produce maple syrup from their 300 acre sugarbush, which is part of a much larger parcel of land conserved through the Vermont Land Trust. They also use their syrup to create value-added products including maple sugar and granola at CAE's Vermont Food Venture Center (VFVC) in Hardwick.

barred woods maple team — Barred Woods Maple team at the sugarhouse, Spring 2025.

Their big red sugarhouse, built in 2021, sits on an eastern slope of Cold Hollow Mountain in the town of Belvidere. Barred Woods is a collaborative partnership among four owners that began in 2017 as a way to conserve land and work within their rural community to help employ people. Their love for the land, ecology, and habitat, and their intent for a working landscape that fosters the economy and community led to a sugaring operation that now employs around 10 people year-round, making Barred Woods one of the largest employers in their small rural town.

barred woods sugarhouse — Barred Woods Maple sugarhouse in Belvidere, Vermont.

Matt with Vermont Fancy syrup sample — Barred Woods co-owner, Matt Paggi, holds a "Vermont Fancy" syrup sample.

In 2025, Barred Woods ran 27,000 taps from their 300 acre sugarbush. The highest elevation on their parcel reaches over 3,000 feet in elevation, near the summit of Cold Hollow Mountain. With the sugarhouse at around 1,100 feet in elevation, gravity helps the sap flow downslope, and they also have a vacuum releaser system to pull the sap into the sugarhouse.

tap lines enter the sugarhouse — Steam rises out of the sugarhouse during the boil, over tap lines from the sugarbush into the sugarhouse.

Sap bubbles through the vacuum releaser system inside the sugarhouse.

An update for 2026:

“This year, we tapped about 34,000 trees. It was another big year for snow, so we did have to spend some time digging out our sap lines, despite them hanging at around five or six feet above the ground. The sugaring season is off to a good start. The weather has been a little inconsistent, with longer stretches of below-freezing temperatures where the sap does not run, but it looks like we have some good looking sugar days ahead!”
-Daniel Paggi, Barred Woods Maple

On a tour of the sugarhouse, co-owner, Matt Paggi, explains how the eastern slopes of their sugarbush, and the mountainous ecology of Vermont generally, is an optimal habitat for sugar maples, which favor moist, but well-drained soils. Though it’s a challenge to navigate on the mountainous ridges in winter, when snow is often at least five feet deep, they use ATVs, snow shoes, and often end up wading through deep snow to tap the trees from the end of December through February.

The sugarhouse, which also houses their packaging and labeling warehouse is the most active when the sap is flowing during March and April. A cycle of nighttime freezing and daytime thawing temperatures creates negative nighttime and positive daytime pressures in the maple tree. When a maple is tapped, the sap will flow through the hole in the trunk because positive daytime pressures inside the tree are greater than the outside air pressure.

reverse osmosis water — Pure maple water separated from the maple sap with reverse osmosis. Barred Woods uses the water pulled from the maple sap to clean all of their equipment systems.

concentrated sap after RO — Concentrated maple sap that has been pulled up to 20% sugar content from the roughly 2% raw sap through reverse osmosis.

On average, maple sap is roughly 98% water and 2% sugar. Barred Woods uses reverse osmosis to concentrate the sugar content before boiling, significantly reducing the evaporation time and saving energy: Matt explains if the sap coming in is at 2% sugar, the reverse osmosis system brings it to roughly 20% sugar, effectively reducing the amount of time for evaporation by ten times. Another benefit is that they are able to recycle all of the byproduct water from the reverse osmosis to clean their equipment systems.

reverse osmosis equipment — Reverse osmosis system at Barred Woods Maple.

sealed barrels of maple syrup — Sealed bottles of maple syrup, with samples on top of a few barrels.

Brian gives the thumbs up as the team prepares the evaporator for a boil.

almost to boiling temp — The evaporator is almost up to the desired temperature of 217 degrees Fahrenheit for the boil.

After reverse osmosis, the concentrated sap is refrigerated at about 34–35 degrees Fahrenheit, and is held at that temperature until it goes into the evaporator. For boiling, the evaporator is brought up to temperature, to about 217 degrees Fahrenheit, which is maintained and monitored during the boil. The buoyancy of the syrup is also closely monitored with a hydrometer to ensure that the density, and thereby the sugar concentration, is correct and consistent. As it finishes boiling, the syrup moves from the evaporator pans through a final filtration process and finally into storage barrels, which are sealed at a high temperature.

checking buoyancy — Ezra checking the buoyancy of the syrup with a hydrometer during the boil.

final filter process — Maple syrup goes through a final filtration before being sealed into barrels at a high temperature.

Barred Woods’ record for syrup production in 2025 was 25 barrels, or 1000 gallons of syrup in one day! On average, they are able to process about 400 gallons of syrup per day during the sugaring season.

In Hardwick, there is a wonderful maple smell in the air at the VFVC when Barred Woods Maple uses the kitchen to turn their syrup into sugar for bulk sale, spices, and granola products. They started working at VFVC in 2017 when their sales were increasing but they didn’t have a full kitchen that was inspected for food safety.

boiling syrup — Boiling maple syrup to make maple sugar at the Vermont Food Venture Center.

maple syrup turning into maple sugar — Boiled maple syrup is turned through the mixer into maple sugar at the Vermont Food Venture Center

“The VFVC is great. The people are really friendly and very helpful. We use equipment and the storage facility for products. It works great for us because we don’t have the space to do this at our facility. As we’ve grown, we’ve been able to get more kitchen time.”
-Barb Paggi, Co-owner, Barred Woods Maple

Barred Woods typically uses VFVC kitchens three times per week, using about one barrel (or 40 gallons) of syrup each visit to produce about 250 pounds of sugar and 100 bags of maple granola products.

granola at vfvc — Barred Woods toasts granola and adds maple sugar to the mix at the VFVC.

packaging granola — Barred Woods packages granola at the VFVC.

Back in Belvidere, they bottle syrup for retail and package and label nearly 250 pounds of maple sugar each day for sale and to mix into other products. Because Vermont is the highest-producing state for maple syrup, Barred Woods has diversified their market with value-added products. Although the whole team brainstorms new products together, Barb takes the lead on creating new recipes for value-added products. For each barrel of syrup in storage, the team measures the sugar content with a glucometer, and makes notes on which barrels will be best suited for each product. They have found that the lighter, amber syrup is best for their sugar and maple cream.

bottling syrup — Bottling maple syrup at the sugarhouse.

This spring 2026, Barred Woods will be breaking ground on another facility at the sugarhouse site in Belvidere that will hold a commercial kitchen to replace the work they currently do at the VFVC. They received a grant for middle-of-the-supply-chain producers through the Inflation Reduction Act, which will help fund the new facility and expand their level of production, which in turn will increase their bulk purchasing from smaller scale maple syrup producers who often have a hard time finding buyers.

Learn more about Barred Woods Maple and purchase their delicious maple syrup and other products online, here: https://barredwoodsmaple.com/

Barred Woods Maple photos by Kelly Bogel Stokes.