This weekend we are filming two more episodes of the series “Cooking Buckets Sugar House: Making Syrup.”
Episode 4 will be a longer virtual tour of the sugar shack. This one is called Inside the Sugar Shack and will walk through the entire process from raw sap to finished syrup. It will show the evaporator, holding tanks, filters, and the steps that turn sap into the final product.
On Sunday we will film Episode 5, called Ride Along With a Sap Farmer. This will be a true ride-along as Jamie heads out to the sugar bushes, checks pumps and vacuum lines, loads sap into the transport tanks, and brings it back to the sugar shack, where it is transferred into the holding tanks.
Most likely something will go wrong along the way. That is just how farming works. There could be a leak in a line, a pump that needs adjusting, or something that has to be fixed in the field. That is part of the real story of maple farming and makes the episode fun and authentic.
The final piece of the series will be Episode 6, called Syrup in Chelmsford: A Retrospective. This episode will look back about twelve years to when Jamie started Cooking Buckets. It will cover the process of getting a lease, securing trees, and the many volunteer work parties that cleared invasives and prepared the land. It will also touch on the challenges along the way, including the COVID years, meeting the person who helped pioneer modern agricultural sap collection methods, and the first successful production seasons. The episode will also look ahead at where the project may go in the future.
At this point we have three episodes already completed and three more planned to finish the educational series on maple syrup production in Chelmsford.
Thousands of people have already viewed the videos, and hundreds have participated in farm tours. In the early days the tree farm was just a quick five- to ten-minute stop on a larger tour. Now that the trees are in production, the sugar bush has become its own destination with tours that can run about thirty minutes.
Taken together, this series becomes a permanent educational record of the process. It is fair to say that no other maple project in town has been documented step by step in this way.
To the best of my knowledge, this is also the only farm educational tour currently happening on town-owned farmland in Chelmsford. The other town farms do not currently include public educational tours or programming. That may be something worth looking at in the future.
Many farmers are understandably cautious about tours because they reveal where crops are located, and theft can be an issue. Some farms have lost large portions of crops such as tomatoes, peppers, and squash.
Sap trees are a little harder to steal, so Jamie probably does not have to worry too much about that.
As soon as these new episodes go live, they will be available on the COSS YouTube channel at:
https://www.youtube.com/@ChelmsfordOSS
Educational and transparency note:
Chelmsford Open Space Stewardship (COSS) shares educational information about local agriculture, open space, and community projects as part of its public education mission. This video series was created to document and explain the maple syrup process in Chelmsford for educational purposes. COSS does not receive compensation from Cooking Buckets Sugar House or any farmer featured. The material is presented for informational and educational purposes only and does not represent the official position of the Town of Chelmsford or any municipal board.