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Guidelines for Assuring Quality in Packaging Maple Syrup
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By-laws for the West Virginia Maple Syrup Association
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Memo of Understanding with Future Generations University
We have a strong partnership with FGU and we all decided to put our combined missions in writing. Download below.
Survey to Allow You To Contribute to our Newsletter
We have a short survey (for fun and information) to maintain a snapshot of our members and also get stories for the newsletter. Even though this was designed for the July 2021 newsletter, there’s no reason you can’t send us feedback at any time!
https://wvmspa.org/please-fill-out-this-form-to-help-us-with-the-next-newsletter/
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Appalachian Maple Cookbook
We’ve got the bookstore link for the Appalachian Maple Cookbook!
This first link below is for the wholesale pricing for producers and shops who want to purchase the books forresale.
https://shop.brickcitybooks.com/products/appalachian-maple-cookbook-wholesale
And here is the regular link for retail sales
https://shop.brickcitybooks.com/products/appalachian-maple-retail
Many thanks to the team at Future Generations University for making this project come to life, especially Jeff Debellis and Kate Fotos.
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West Virginia Sugar Operation Review Preparedness Manual & Regulatory Guidelines handbook
Please download the following two documents for use with your sugar operation. The first part of this book is a set of guidelines that follow the West Virginia Department of Agriculture’s Sugaring Operations Inspection Checklist. The second part of this book presents a Decision Tree and Regulatory Matrix that you can follow to help you comply with state and federal regulation that apply to your production and sale of maple syrup. In each instance, the decision tree or matrix cell provides you with a link to the regulation and/or the specific form you may need to submit to be in compliance with the specific regulatory requirement. Finally, this book is designed to be yours. By adding material specific to your sugaring operation, it becomes your record of what you are doing and how you are doing it to assure retailers, customers, or yourself that your operation is a safe food processing facility.
Future Generations Syrup Handbook:
Syrup Handbook – Future Generations University had a grant to put this together! – Not only does it have a lot of excellent information spelled out in the PDF itself, but there is a large resource section up front with even more links for your all your technical maple needs. You can view the link from FGU by clicking on the aforementioned link or download it here for your very own copy which will be quicker to browse once downloaded:
Here are some useful links for more resources.
- Daniels Maple Products – serving all of WV and VA
- Vermont Evaporator
- Maple Trader
- Maple News
- Proctor Maple Research Center (University of Vermont)
- Maple Research (North American Maple Syrup Council) (mapleresearch.org)
- Maple Statistics
- New York State Maple – Helpful Videos for people of all ages
- Agritourism in West Virginia
- Appalachian Beginning Forest Farmers (Agroforestry)
- Association for Temperate Agroforestry
- The RO Bucket – Highly recommended by Mike Rechlin: the only commercially available, small scale, portable reverse osmosis machine made for Maple Syrup Production.
- SapTapApps – A nifty tool to see your “flowcast” for your area, and to log your sap yields for a time frame. In time, the developers will use the logs to improve the flowcast.
- West Virginia Food and Farm Coalition – Building a resilient and equitable local food system in West Virginia – Audra O’Dell (Cell phone # 304-808-1310) – Foodshed Coordinator for Lewis, Doddridge, and Harrison Counties – aodell@wvfoodandfarm.org
More Vermont Maple Resources:
- UVM Extension Maple homepage – Maple Extension resources
- UVM PMRC Educational Videos – A series of research and educational videos focusing on high yield production
- Vermont Maple Minute – Brief podcasts of topics relating to maple trees and maple syrup production
- Vermont Maple Bulletin – Continuous update of the Vermont maple season
- Maple Business – at UVM Extension Ag Business Programs with access to reports, outreach publications, recent presentations and maple benchmarking enrollment information
- Maple Manager – a growing body of business planning tools, financial calculators, legal templates and forestry resources
- UVM Extension Maple Development – Online seminars starting in August 2020. Go to the website to see the calendar and register
As someone who likes to make her own clothing, I found this video interesting, and wondered if we could somehow tie textile production in with agroforestry. For example, what if we use the extra wood we cut away during forest management for textiles, or somehow incorporate hemp farming on our farms? Are there other ways to produce textiles? Bamboo makes nice cloth too.