Strap on those boots so you can experience the unique family
traditions of making maple syrup at White Oak Farm in Yorktown Heights.
The picturesque landscape of White Oak Farm dates all the way back
to the 1800s. “This is a great time with the weather warming up to get outside,
enjoy the countryside, walk on the farm, you can walk the
trails, you can walk around; it’s just a beautiful spot,” says Bri Hart, of White Oak Farm.
It’s also most known for sugar tapping. “We have the most southern
commercial producer of maple syrup in the entire state of New York right here
in Yorktown,” says Yorktown Town Supervisor Matthew
Slater.
And you can see that with the 15 miles of tubes connecting over 2,400
trees the farm taps from. “We make a lot of syrup and we make it fast,
we process about 50,000 gallons of sap a year. The tubing brings all the sap
down to the sugarhouse where boil it,” says Hart.
The farm’s evaporator is a beast of a machine, it boils 900
gallons of sap every hour.
Visitors can learn about this historical process first-hand
through private tours. “We also want people to understand the history of maple
syrup and how it began probably thousands of years ago in this area with the
Native Americans who first began tapping trees, and we’re even going to discuss
how they turned sap into syrup,” says Hart
This Saturday and Sunday is your chance to be a part of the
tradition for Maple Weekend! It’s
back on for the first time after a two-year break due to the pandemic. All the information you need to get your tickets is up on our
website right now
.