It’s Here!—The Book of Knowledge on How to Make Maple Syrup

Last Updated on June 20, 2024 by Michelle

Looking for a link to order Sweet Maple? Look no further, order on amazon right here. (affiliate link) Or go here for a peek inside the book–including some yummy recipes!

So I did these things…

A few days ago I did this thing… and then another thing… While they seemed unrelated at the time yet, I just realized, they were amazingly intertwined.

The first thing? After almost 3 years of pretty intense effort I launched a book out into the world last week… a book that will encourage homes across the country to take one small, sweet step toward more sustainable living… a book that will draw families together and put all-naturally sweetened goodness on their tables. A book about how to make maple syrup and so much more. Needless to say, I’m super excited about this.

Then I launched this gorgeous old farmhouse table into a new life. And this story, well it almost made me cry (happy tears).

Traveling 1,000 miles for a farmhouse table…

You see, just last month, I had traveled over 1,000 miles, round-trip, to a cousin’s storage unit where this piece had been taken apart and packed away until I could get there. This table is the table that stood in the kitchen of an old house in a little rural area known as Greenridge, Maryland.

Nothing about that old house was unassuming. It was a large white farmhouse with a gorgeous double-decker front porch where my daddy spent many hours growing up. It’s long porches stretched out there in the rolling hills that sauntered down to the canal and railroad tracks. Canal boats and numerous train cars brought many a people through Greenridge, but not many who stayed.

I have no idea how or when this table arrived at that rural home, but it sure must have added a gorgeous piece of flair to that home in the hills. My daddy must have spent many long hours at this table, watching his momma knead the daily bread, his little chubby fingers learning to break beans or churn butter–any simple tasks grandma may have given to the almost baby of the family.

Pieces of family history…

While I know nothing of the table’s origins, I’m so grateful that other family members treasure such things–pieces of family history with stories to tell–as much as I do. And I’m so thankful that a few sweet cousins decided it was time for this table to draw folks together around real food again, in another old farmhouse… a 200-year-old New England cape situated on sloping homestead that saunters down to the river that hugs its borders.

On that Maryland homestead, and here on this New England one, for hundreds of years, families have worked hard to put good food on the dinner table. And now one table has lived on both homesteads, in two different farmhouse kitchens, but all in one family.

Then on Tuesday, October 1st–a rainy, chilly, unassuming fall day here on our New England homestead–Kayla and I set up this sweet, old table in our family’s farmhouse kitchen. A long way from the canal banks in Greenridge, in that tiny pocket of Maryland that’s cradled by the eastern panhandle of West Virginia, to our little rocky homestead that stretches up from the cool waters of the riverbank.

Meanwhile, in bookstores…

Meanwhile, that very same day my book was popping up on bookstore displays across the country (or so I’m told, I still find this next to impossible to believe). Sweet Maple is about how our family has changed things up a little and worked hard to simplify our lives, especially the food we fill our table with, making the food real and our efforts sustainable, whenever we can.

And then that very night for dinner we were gathered around the same table where my daddy, as a young boy, ate nothing but “real food” and knew no way of life other than a “sustainable” one.

October 1st was a very good day indeed.

I could never have planned such a perfect story; but I am so thankful it was written that way.

The Book of Knowledge on How to Make Maple Syrup

It’s hard for me to describe my new book, Sweet Maple, in just a few words. Because I pretty much mixed my genres. (I always have liked mixing things up a bit.)

• It’s part cookbook (with every recipe–from sweet to savory–incorporating maple in some way),
• part instructional manual (about how to tap trees and make maple syrup, but also about how to bake with maple syrup and how to make candies, sugar, and cream),
• part memoir (about our family’s efforts to simplify things),
• and 100% encouraging and delicious.

So I love the ways CIndy Kuhns, a reader in Ohio, recently described it. Cindy said it’s a Book of Knowledge of all things Maple. (Get a peek inside, read about the $75 worth of bonuses that come with every purchase, and see more reviews right here.)

I love that Joel Salatin said that this book is “a compelling one for anyone’s self-reliance book shelf,” because one of my goals in writing Sweet Maple was to encourage folks that moving towards sustainability can be done with very simple steps, and the first one can be making one’s own all-natural sugar.

To inspire you a little more, though, in next week’s post I’ll share 5 very simple ways to make a big difference toward being more sustainable. Meanwhile, I have a huge favor to ask… But it comes with a chance to win a few really fun things. Read on for the details.

And listen in below or on your favorite podcast player to find out some information about the science of syrup:

I’m on a mission & I need your help.

I’m on a mission to bring the warm sweetness of an all-natural, super-food syrup into kitchens everywhere.

I’m on a mission for others to know the pure joy that our family does when we sit at the breakfast table, pouring our syrup over our pancakes and looking out at the very trees that produced this syrup. Self-sustaining, right-from-the-source food has truly never tasted so sweet.

I’m on a mission to teach thousands of people how to make maple syrup.

Yet so many people who could be tapping a tree right in their own yard don’t even know it yet. They don’t know that they don’t have to live in the maple belt. They don’t know that they don’t even have to have a maple tree, since there are 30 varieties of trees that can be used to make syrup (at least one of which grows in every single state in the U.S.).

Stacy Lyn Harris, a TV personality and bestselling author, talks about that in her short video review of my book that you can watch here on facebook and or you can watch here on instagram.

And so many people don’t know they can bake with maple, adding minerals, antioxidants, and polyphenolic compounds to their diet in such an easy way.

Sharon Peterson, an online influencer who writes at SimplyCanning.com, mentions that in this brief video, in her book review of Sweet Maple.

 

This is how you can help.

Would you be willing to help me spread the sweetness? The awesome folks over at Smoky Lake Maple and Jovial Foods wanted to help me on my mission, so they donated these amazing prizes.

To enter the giveaway, this is all you have to do:

1. Hop over to Amazon and leave a brief review of Sweet Maple. 
2. Then leave a comment below, letting me know you’ve left a review and what prize you hope to win.

In a few weeks, we’ll randomly choose two winners and announce them right here.

One will receive an amazing tool to help them make perfect syrup, every time–a Murphy Compensation Cup from Smoky Lake Maple. This amazing cup (a $139 value!), along with a hydrometer, is all you need to bottle syrup at the perfect temperature and brix.

And another winner will enjoy a $50 Gift Card to Jovial foods. They have the most amazing ancient-grain flour. (I share a maple cookie recipe made with their Einkorn flour in my crash course on Making Maple Sugar.)

So please help! Hop over to Amazon and leave a book review right here (affiliate link)… unless you still need to grab a copy? You can read more about Sweet Maple right here–and the $75 worth of amazing free bonuses that come with your purchase! If your local bookstore isn’t carrying it yet, please suggest to them that they should, but you can order a copy right here as well. (affiliate link)

Thanks so much to all who entered! I drew the winners live on facebook, right here.

 

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The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.

Psalm 16:6

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And have you tried my a-MAAHZ-ing Maple Sugar Cookie recipe that’s in my Resource Library? It’s one little peek into Sweet Maple waiting for you over there.