The Belly-Ache Tour

Before we arrived in Vermont I researched tours in the area and found several interesting places.  When we arrived at the RV campground we were given a map and a list of tours that included most of the ones I had already found.  We appreciated the campground going to all the trouble of printing out a map and the helpful list of places to visit.

We had several stops planned on our first day.  All of them food related!

Maple Grove Farms was our first stop.

There wasn’t an actual “farm” at this area.  There was a very small museum and gift shop.

Outside the museum is this wonderful wooden hand-carved bottle of maple syrup.

Inside the museum was an original candy mold of their maple leaf.

 Maple leaf candy mold.

Maple candy to purchase.

This pan was the original way of turning sap into syrup.

There was a wonderful photograph of women packing up the candies.

We saw these women through a window while walking to the gift shop.

There was another building on site where the pancake mix is packaged.

We headed to the gift shop for a for a few purchases.

Our next stop was the Goodrich’s Maple Farm.

Maple trees are tapped in the spring, so we were not able to see the actual process.

Our guide was Ruth Goodrich.  Her and her husband, Glen, own and operate the sugar house.  Their families settled in this area in the 1830’s.

Ruth is holding a drill used to tap the maple trees.

This machine is used to boil the sap. 

55 gallons of sap are needed to make 1 gallon of syrup.

This is a slab of a 200-year-old tree that was blown over.  You can see the imprints where the tree has been tapped for many years.  It takes a Sugar Maple tree 40-60 years to grow about 12 inches in diameter.  Trees under 12 inches are not tapped.  For each foot in diameter a tree can have one tap.

After the very informative tour with Ruth we visited the gift shop for a few purchases.

We passed up two more sugar houses on the way to our next stop.  We could have spent the whole day visiting different sugar houses, so we decided to limit them to just one today.

Next on our list was Cabot Cheese.  We have been to many cheese factories and watched the entire production through windows.  We were disappointed to learn that Cabot Cheese stopped offering factory tours at the beginning of the year.

We were shown a 9-minute video about the company.

640-pound block of cheese.

They had a wonderful gift shop with lots of samples.

We made a few purchases.

Our next stop was Ben and Jerry’s Ice cream.  We were looking forward to this tour.

We were not prepared for the number of tour buses!  After searching for, and not finding, a parking space, we decided to leave this tour for another day.

After passing up Ben and Jerry’s we headed to our last stop of the day.  Cold Hollow Cider Mill.

The gift shop is at the front of the building and is huge!!

We finally made it to the back of the building where the cider was being pressed.

250 pounds of crushed apples called a pomace (mash) are used to make 25 gallons of apple cider.

The pomace is pressed under 100 tons for 15 minutes.

The liquid is pumped to the pasteurizer then straight to the jugging room. 

The pressed mash is sold to farmers as pig feed and fertilizer.

After sampling the freshly pressed cider we spent some time in the gift shop where we bought a few items including warm maple donuts (the donuts were delicious).

After a full day we headed back home.

*** Just a note - A lot of our purchases were for gifts.  We’re not going to eat all of this!!