Maple syrup and other irresistible maple-flavored sweets

Wed, 06/14/2017 - 10:15am

The Farmers Market at Boothbay Center has been open for just over a month on Thursdays in its 2017 season.

Featuring farmers and vendors from all over Maine, the market has something for all manner of tastes and interests. There are pastries, breads, cheeses, seafood, organic fruits, vegetables and herbs, jams, plants and cut flowers. There are wool products. There's jewelry and note cards. There's milk, meats, coffee, Asian foods, pet treats, micro greens, candles and soaps.

And there are maple products: syrup, candy and sugar. MOFGA-certified organic Frontier Maple Sugarworks’ syrup is produced by VJ Guarino and Carrie Braman, in Sandy Bay Township, next door to Jackman, where they lease state-owned land laden with maple trees.

In the off-season, when the sap isn’t running and the syrup isn’t boiling, the couple lives in Northport, with their 9-month-old son, Quinn.

Braman was selling the syrup, candy and granulated maple sugar at the farmers market on June 8, with help from Quinn and employee Cassie Choplick.

After making the syrup, Guarino transports barrels full of the sweet syrup to Northport to be canned, or bottled, and sold. Frontier Maple Sugarworks began in October 2011, when a lease on 200 acres of state land in Sandy Bay Township was signed.

The couple, who met in Vermont in 2002, moved to Montana in 2007, but returned to New England a few years later, with hopes of starting a maple syrup business. According to their website, it took three years to find funding to build the sugar house, and purchase the needed equipment for boiling the sap.

They were able to achieve their dream thanks in large part to Coastal Enterprises, Inc., and started collecting sap in 2011. In 2013, they built their sugar house and Frontier Maple Sugarworks was up and running.

“Our name, which refers to our location on the remote western border of Maine, is also an homage to our favorite breakfast destination in the world, Albuquerque’s (New Mexico) Frontier Restaurant,” Braman stated on the business’s website, www.frontiersugarworks.com. “It seems an apt title for our enterprise because of the rustic skill-set sugaring work demands, because we're on the frontiers of the industry, and because we have embraced the frontiersman's spirit of ‘making do.’”

One of Frontier Maple Sugarworks’ more unusual products is granulated maple sugar. Braman said it is made by cooking the sap for a longer time, cooking more of the water out of the syrup. “It’s this really cool thing where you can actually see the chemical structure of the sap change. It poofs up and gets a foamy head on it, like a beer. Then it cracks on the top and turns into this granulated sugar.”

At $20 per pound, Braman admits it’s pricey, but it is a pure, organic sugar. “We have people who come weekly to get it because it’s the only sugar they use. It tastes like maple, but it’s not as strong a flavor as brown sugar. It’s more subtle.”

Another, even more unusual, item at the  booth is candy buttons. Braman said she was looking for a winter project, and was thinking maple candy. “Two years ago I decided I wanted to make candy, and I found these button molds on Etsy.”

The business’s products can be found at three other farmers markets in Maine, in Camden, Bar Harbor and Northeast Harbor. For more information visit frontiersugarworks.com, or its Facebook page, email frontiermaple@gmail.com, or call 207-668-2160 or 207-322-1648.

The Boothbay Farmers Market is open every Thursday, 9 a.m. to noon, until Oct. 6.