Life is sweet at Athol Orchards
Mom Liberty Herkelrath and boys Ezra, 4, left, and Ethan, 6, and baby Evan, 6 months, peek into an antique collection bucket as sap drips from a tap at Athol Orchards during a Wild + Free homeschool field trip on Thursday.
DEVIN WEEKS/Press
Bodhi Christopherson, 4, waits with a popsicle stick as Eric Conley pours boiled down maple syrup onto a pan of shaved ice for a historical treat called "sugar on the snow" during a field trip to Athol Orchards on Thursday.
Nikki Conley, who owns Athol Orchards with husband Eric, holds up one of the first jars of Athol Orchards' North Idaho-made maple syrup during a presentation about harvesting and making maple syrup on Thursday.
ATHOL — If "sugar on the snow" was a regular treat during New England winters in the old days, then the old days couldn't have been that bad.
This heavenly traditional maple taffy was a bonus for families who visited the new commercial kitchen at the Athol Orchards Antique Apple Farm and Bakery on Friday.
The kids of a Wild + Free homeschooling field trip group watched with big eyes as Athol Orchards owners Nikki and Eric Conley demonstrated this homemade candy of yesteryear by drizzling freshly boiled maple syrup on a tray of snow (in this case, shaved ice), pressing it to a popsicle stick and rolling along until the tacky syrup hardened and wrapped around like a lollipop.
The reviews were all five stars.
"It's pretty good," 14-year-old Grant Lichfield said.
Bodhi Christopherson, 4, nodded as he finished his treat.
"Good!" he said.
Maple sugaring day was filled with information all about tapping maple trees to harvest sap, how to make syrup from scratch and how Americans did it without automation or factories when the country was young. Way before that, American Indians had the process down, using wooden taps and birch bark buckets to collect the sap.
"We took their design and started making them into metal," she said. "We learned everything we know from the Indians."
Nikki's passion for history and preserving these unique traditions shined as she delivered enthusiastic presentations for her audience. She explained why real maple syrup is so precious and expensive — it's a long, tedious process and the yield is small. It takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. But it's worth every drop.
"If you were ever angry about the price, this is why," she said. "It's like gold."
Nikki discussed the Idaho Mapleshed Project, an initiative Athol Orchards is launching to invite property owners to register their maples and contribute to a unique local product. If people have maples to lend to the project, they'll receive a finished bottle of locally harvested and made syrup for participating.
"We go out to your farm and properties, we tap your trees, we harvest their sap, we bring it back to our kitchen here," she said. "Then we process all this maple sap into a finished maple syrup. Because we have this selection of all these different maple trees, we actually have a collective that's large enough to produce enough to sell. What we're going to be producing is essentially, North Idaho's first and only North Idaho maple syrup."
Athol Orchards has educational, fun events and projects happening all year, from maple tapping to antique apple harvesting.
Info: www.atholorchards.com
