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Vermont has certainly lived up to it's reputation as the cheese state! We have tasted an enormous amount over the last 2 days.
We started today at the Woodstock Farmers Market which had a large range of fresh fruit & veggies, oils and sauces, meats & bakery items. We bought breakfast sandwiches, basically egg & bacon rolls, and headed to Sugarbush Cheese & Maple Farm. Just to the side of the car park was a small paddock where a calf and 3 goats were hanging out. We went over to pat them & saw we could buy bags of grain to feed them. We bought 3 bags which they made short work of.
Inside we were greeted by a lady who took us to a cheese tasting table. Sugarbush Farm make 14 varieties of cheese, 4 grades of maple syrup and a huge amount of jams, chutneys and sauces. She asked us what kind of cheese we liked & we both liked sharp cheeses. She gave us a taste of one that had been aged 4yrs, then 6yrs, then 8yrs. That was definitely my favourite. We also tasted a smoked cheese, a cheese with onion and one with jalapeño.
Then we tasted the maple syrups. We started with a very mild one which is produced from sap at the beginning of the season then moved on to ones from later in the season. There were 4 different grades.
Sugarbush Farm was started in 1945 and has remained a very traditionally operated family farm. The second and third generations now run the business day to day while the fourth generation (kids) are learning about farm life. The farm is 550 acres and surrounded by thousands of maple trees which are currently all shades of red, orange and yellow.
After our tasting, we went back outside to the sugar house where we watched a video about the maple syrup making process and looked at the equipment used. Metals taps are put in the trees in late Feb and sap is collected through March and early April. Precise weather is needed to ensure sap flows so every season lasts for a different length of time. The average seemed to be about 20 days of sap collecting. About 7000 trees are tapped each year.
The sap runs through plastic pipes and into buckets. The buckets are taken down by hand and then transferred by sleigh to the sugarhouse to be boiled down into pure maple syrup.
After looking through the sugarhouse, we walked up to the 'sugarbush' which is the common name for the area where the maple trees are being tapped. It isn't maple season but they leave the lines and some tubes up so visitors can see how it works. As we headed up the hill, I could hear something tapping. There weren't any other people close to us so we looked up in the trees and saw a woodpecker tapping away on the trunk. That was very cool.
The original owners of the farm developed a wax dipping process for the cheese which means it can be non refrigerated for a couple of days. We bought a small block and some maple syrup each.
We left the farm and headed south to a town called Weston. We had picked up a brochure advertising the Vermont Country Store so decided to check it out. It was just over an hour away but the drive took us through some spectacular country. We passed a beautiful lake where there were people paddle boarding, canoeing, fishing and riding paddle boats but could see the ski runs cut in the mountains and the ski gear shops in the village. The lake was completely still on our way back and we could see the autumn trees reflected in the water which was lovely.
The store looked fairly small from the outside but when we went in, it was like walking into Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. That was partly because we walked in to see rows and rows of lolly jars and chocolates and partly because it was full of people moving around. The store just kept going. Luckily we hadn't had lunch because there was lots be tasted inside. There were cheeses, dips, cookies, sauces, jams, chips, pretzels, salamis, fudge, maple syrup and many varieties of each. It was all self serve so you could have as much as you liked. We even tasted Tab. I don't think it is available in Australia anymore but this store was selling it.
There was also a big range of vintage kids toys. It was funny to see adults playing with them but that seemed to be the purpose. I even got to play a squeezebox!
There were homewares, clothing, health & beauty items, hardware - everything you could have needed in there. The store was decorated with a lot of very cool vintage items - old apothecary jars, boxes, shoes, equipment and so on. There was one row where old scales and weighing machines were on display and a cabinet of old toasters. The store has been in the Orton family since 1946. They also have Mildred's Dairy Bar next door which was selling hamburgers, drinks and ice cream. We spent 1.5hrs in the store looking around and tasting.
Across the road was a Christmas shop and another country store type shop with cheese and fudge. There was no way we could try another thing. Unfortunately the artisans gallery had closed a couple of minutes before we got to it.
Back in Woodstock we waited until 7.30pm before going out for dinner at a Caribbean bistro in town. We finally got some flavour!
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