Sweet Maple: Backyard Sugarmaking from Tap to Table

by Michelle Visser

Sweet Maple is an instructional book on backyard sugarmaking that’s also the story of the family’s connection to the past on a small New England sugar farm. Throughout its pages, Michelle gives advice

While learning the art of sugarmaking alongside her husband, Michelle guides readers through every step of all-natural syrup production, with directions for tapping one tree or hundreds, while detailing the life-changing benefits of using maple syrup in the kitchen. Interspersed with sugaring techniques, tips, sidebars, and storytelling, Michelle shares more than 30 of her family’s tried-and-true maple recipes—from scones to salads.

Genres: Cookbooks, Nonfiction

232 pages, Paperback

Published September 17, 2019

About the author

Michelle Visser is a homesteader in rural New England. She's also a sugarmaker, a fourth-generation gardener, photographer, wife to her high school sweetheart, and mom to four daughters. She likes her sentences loaded with descriptions, sweatshirts always equipped with hoods, and tea black with a sweet chunk of maple sugar. In the Vissers' two-hundred-year-old farmhouse--which sounds more glamorous than it actually is--and on their fourteen rocky, tree-filled acres--which sound smaller than they actually are when you're collecting and carrying gallons of tree sap--the family makes an effort to live life a little more simply. They grow and preserve some of their own food, raise a few farm animals, and make their own all-natural maple sugar.

Reviews

[Wild Ones Homestead]

My first ever batch of homemade maple syrup is finished! It is SO yummy and honestly it was easier than I expected, I think that was largely due to this book. I read it before hand and used it to get all my supplies and then referenced it throughout the process to double check that I was doing it correctly. I'd consider it an invaluable resource to anyone (especially newbies!) to Tapping/Maple Syrup Making.

[Hope]

The book is just plain AWESOME!!!
It is chocked full of not just wonderful maple syrup recipes, it is filled with sugaring information. This is the "how-to" of modern sugaring! Yummy, yummy, YUMMY!
I am so glad I bought this!

[Kaylah]

Delightful

[Debbie]

What a wonderful look into the world of the sugar bush. Great details into tapping a tree woven with her own personal stories. Even if you are not in an area of sugar maples, the author gives a list of other trees to tap and now I can't wait to find some Big Leaf Maples to try my own hand at making sugar in the PNW.