Old Sugarhouse in the foreground, current sugarhouse boiling in the background.
The Bothfeld family moved to Cabot Vermont in 1936, and has been farming Dunstable Farm on what is now called Bothfeld Hill Road consistently since then. The first sugarhouse was built in 1942 and used until the current sugarhouse was erected in 1990. The original sugarhouse still stands and is used for storage.
While most farms have converted to plastic pipeline to vacuum out the sap from each tree, Dunstable Farm still does it the old-fashioned, time-honored traditional way: hand collection of metal sap buckets. Most sugarhouses hang a few buckets on the road to show the tourists, but every ounce of sap here is collected by hand and cured over a wood-fired stove, with firewood collected on the property.
What makes hand-collected sap better? When vacuuming sap out of trees, all the sap is collected and processed: the good and the bad. When collecting by hand, only the purest, clearest sap is collected, and the “yellow” sap is discarded. This produces the sweetest, purest product possible. Dunstable syrup is well-known in the area as the best!
Dunstable Farm is a 400-acre dairy farm, milking approximately 60 cows, selling milk to a local co-operative. Days begin early, with “chores”: a 5:30 a.m. milking and a 4:30 p.m. milking, 365 days a year. There are no days off from farming.
The farm also houses a few pigs and chickens, mostly for private consumption, not to mention dogs, cats, hens, and other assorted native wildlife. Most of the produce consumed by the Bothfeld family is grown on the farm as well, and frozen, canned, or stored in the root cellar for those cold winter months.
The family also processes approximately 500 turkeys every year to be sold primarily for Thanksgiving, again processing entirely by hand; all fresh, never frozen. And again, locals “in the know” place their orders early to make sure they get the tastiest, freshest turkey in the region.
While most farms have converted to plastic pipeline to vacuum out the sap from each tree, Dunstable Farm still does it the old-fashioned, time-honored traditional way: hand collection of metal sap buckets. Most sugarhouses hang a few buckets on the road to show the tourists, but every ounce of sap here is collected by hand and cured over a wood-fired stove, with firewood collected on the property.
What makes hand-collected sap better? When vacuuming sap out of trees, all the sap is collected and processed: the good and the bad. When collecting by hand, only the purest, clearest sap is collected, and the “yellow” sap is discarded. This produces the sweetest, purest product possible. Dunstable syrup is well-known in the area as the best!
Dunstable Farm is a 400-acre dairy farm, milking approximately 60 cows, selling milk to a local co-operative. Days begin early, with “chores”: a 5:30 a.m. milking and a 4:30 p.m. milking, 365 days a year. There are no days off from farming.
The farm also houses a few pigs and chickens, mostly for private consumption, not to mention dogs, cats, hens, and other assorted native wildlife. Most of the produce consumed by the Bothfeld family is grown on the farm as well, and frozen, canned, or stored in the root cellar for those cold winter months.
The family also processes approximately 500 turkeys every year to be sold primarily for Thanksgiving, again processing entirely by hand; all fresh, never frozen. And again, locals “in the know” place their orders early to make sure they get the tastiest, freshest turkey in the region.
