Maple Dijon Vinaigrette & a Ski Through the Sugarbush
Simple, easy, sweet and delicious on fresh greens:
Whisk together:
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly cracked black pepper
Eight Ways to Make the Most of Ski Season
Yankee Magazine March 2020
by Carol Connare
John Ripley wants to show us how maple trees heal. We are bounding along on cross-country skis at Maple Corner Farm in Granville, Massachusetts, touring a sugarbush of hundreds of acres of mature maple trees. John, whose family has been farming these woods and fields since 1812, moves as if he had been born on skis, and no wonder: The farm opened a skiing center 36 years ago, when he was just a boy, to diversify its operations in winter.
We pull up to look at a four-foot cross-section of a recently felled maple. Midway through its annual rings was evidence: a small dark scab the size of a coffee bean, a pock on otherwise perfectly concentric circles. This grown-over spot is where the tree healed after being tapped about 30 years ago, says John. “We use only the most compassionate, least invasive taps,” he explains. “It’s a light compression system, to help everything flow downhill.”
To ski through the Ripleys’ sugarbush is to follow the path of the sweet stuff, to race the sap to the bottom of the hill. Aptly named trails like Old Sugar House and Bucket Path traverse a forest of maple trees of every age, from spindly teenagers reaching for the sun to wide-bottomed elders, some 200 years old, that anchor whole slopes. Brookside Trail meanders alongside a burbling stream, and we come upon a beech tree with an apron of fresh woodchips around its base, a woodpecker’s morning shift. John shows us an offshoot trail that leads to a sparkling half-frozen waterfall, fed by the nearby Cobble Mountain Reservoir.
Sap pipeline and some 4,500 taps connect the trees, just as relics stitch together the Ripley family history. We come upon a foundation wall where John’s great-great-grandfather sugared using an iron kettle and a flat pan, which visitors can see and touch for themselves in one corner of the sugar barn. There’s also a photo of John’s dad, Leon, as a little boy in 1956, helping boil the sap with his father.
The Ripleys curate their past and at the same time are bent on the future. Parents Leon and Joyce run the farm while all three grown sons and their families help out, including operating a sugarhouse built in 2018 and outfitted with gleaming high-tech equipment and touchscreen controls. When the sap is flowing, they can collect up to 5,000 gallons a day, 70,000 gallons in a season. From grandparents to grandkids, all hands are on deck to process that into maple candies, creams, and sugars; to rent skis and snowshoes; and, on weekends during sugaring season, to make and serve a sweet breakfast for hungry skiers and nonskiers alike. —Carol Connare
794 Beech Hill Road, Granville, MA. 413-357-8829; maplecornerfarm.com
