We welcome you to come visit us at Stonehurst, our fine furniture showroom in Vernon Vermont. Just 10 minutes from Brattleboro and a few hours car ride from Burlington, Boston and NYC, Stonehurst is an easy trip from most places in the northeast.
With cold nights (~20 degrees) and warm days (~50 degrees) it’s a great time to be tapping maples for their sap! We have about 10 collection buckets outside Stonehurst Showroom, and on a good day they all fill. If you take a trip through this neck of the woods, you’ll see many of our neighbors doing the same with smaller and larger setups.
Filled buckets are transferred into a 50 gallon drum which sits in the shade of our wood shed. Getting too warm would cause the watery sap to spoil before it’s boiled down into maple syrup. This drum does get hit with about an hour of sun in the late afternoon–oh well 🙂
Once the drum is full, we pump the sap from there into an empty drum on a pickup truck and take it offsite to strain and boil. Boiling temperatures and methods are a science and an art, with lots of folks offering their opinions for what makes the best maple syrup!
Pancake luncheon anyone?
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This post was originally published in December, 2017 but we thought it appropriate to re-share on this cold, snowy day. If you have a wood boiler, reach out to our resident expert, Ken on Facebook for tips and advice on how to stay warm all winter long.
To heat our showroom, we’re using an E-Classic 2400 Central Boiler which we purchased from Dale Temple of Temple Plumbing & Heating in Westminster, Vermont. We burn scrap wood (from furniture making) and trees that need to be culled from our forest.
Heating Stonehurst Sustainably
My wife, Peggy, and I started a sustainable furniture company in 2005. The business has grown over the years and in September 2012 we purchased Stonehurst, a historic property and former ski area in Vernon, Vermont. The goal was to restore the property and create a unique destination for customers to shop for Vermont made wooden furniture. We decided to invest in an outdoor wood boiler to heat the renovated property. Peggy wanted to avoid using fossil fuels and I wanted to make use of the property’s many downed trees.Read More
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Dear Customers & Readers, Our talented friend, Linda Marcille who created these extraordinary paintings, has fallen ill and is looking to sell them immediately to pay for medical expenses. All 5 paintings in the series are available and we are hoping to keep the collection together. If you or someone you know is interested in acquiring the series, please reach out to us on Facebook or Contact Us. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to bring a priceless art collection into your home, office or museum. Read More
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Much of the food grown in our edible landscape is perennial. We have fruit trees, nut trees, and long-lived and self-seeding greens: sochan, nettle, wood sorrel and lamb’s quarters, to name a few. Once established as part of the landscape, perennials and self-seeders won’t rely (much) on human hands. Convenient! But annual crops are an important part of the landscape, too. Inter-cropping the annuals with the perennials can be beneficial to both.
Preparing the ground for sowing corn
This year I wanted to make a “milpa.” This is a term for the ancient practice of interplanting corn and other plants in a way that benefits the ecosystem. It’s commonly called the “three sisters” although we have more than three sisters, and even a few cousins 🙂 Wild raspberries and strawberries, yarrow and goldenrod for the bees, and many greens, including lamb quarters, lady thumb, and sheep sorrel, all play their parts.
Preparations for cornfield. Photo taken last November
We mow the meadow, so creeping perennials with robust root systems tend to win out. Last November, in order to kill the grass we cut a 30′ x 30′ section as low as possible to the ground, and then mulched heavily with grass clippings, leaves, and wood chips from a hardwood we felled nearby. This worked well to delay the emergence of grass in spring, but it didn’t kill it completely.
One block of emerging popcorn
Later on, loads of compost were added on top to block out sun from the creepers and feed the crops we wanted to encourage. Overplanting, and then thinning, can discourage weeds. It also keeps the ground shady and moist for the young plants.
Knee-high!
Corn needs to be planted in dense blocks to encourage pollination. It emerged after Spring rains–no watering needed. The corn is now in the reproductive stage, with tassels releasing pollen daily and cobs thickening as the kernels develop.
Our meadow “milpa” in late July. Winter squash, beans, nettle, and of course corn.
So far so good! Stay tuned and we will see what we get.
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Small businesses are made of big people like these craftsmen and women at Maple Corner Woodworks. We work to deliver beautiful handmade furniture to your home, but also to make the world a better place.
Remembering Those Who Sacrificed Everything for Us
Memorial Day is a time of remembrance, honoring those heroes who gave their lives in service to our country. The simple act of planting a tree can honor their legacy for generations.
These mature maple trees are among hundreds that grace the property where our furniture showroom lives in Southeastern Vermont. Every year at this time, we have thousands of maple seedlings that spring up, hoping to out-compete other plants on the property. This year we decided to nurture some of those seedlings for our customers and our community. We think there are infinite reasons to plant a tree, but Memorial Day seems particularly relevant.
This year, we received a truckload of compost from a local rancher (the father of our fantastic intern Whitney—if you received a package of wood samples last year, she may have sent them to you). Tractor load by tractor load we are moving the compost to sunny spots on the property. Placing compost directly onto the grass eliminates the need for labor-intensive tilling.
By managing our own forest here in Vermont since 2013, we have witnessed the beautiful harmony of a healthy ecosystem. When Vermont Woods Studios outgrew the spare bedroom in Peggy’s home, our team searched for a permanent home. Above all, our goal was to find a space that would reflect the values of the company and offer a home to showcase the works of Vermont’s finest furniture craftsmen. After a long search, we found Stonehurst. As you can imagine, we love every minute we get to spend out in our forest!
