The courthouse in Monterey is a focal point for Highland Maple Festival fun. (Photo courtesy Highland County Chamber of Commerce)
We have a “V” rivalry in our family — unrelated to in-state universities with the “V” word. Like the native-Virginian poet, Ellen Bryant Voigt, our daughter Katy (not a poet) became a Vermont resident a few years ago, making our autumn foliages and maple syrups rivals in terms of our respective state patriotism.
Katy and the rest of our family do agree that it’s the experience of visiting a maple-sugar farm and talking to the farmers that tasters savor in the syrup: Our olfactory senses tend to remember — when we’re enjoying the syrup thereafter — the mixture of smoke-and-maple-scented steam rising from a sugar pan over a wood fire. If you haven’t visited at least one of the farms, you can’t fully appreciate the syrup. Mind you, it might be costly — not in terms of admission to this year’s 60th Highland Maple Festival ($3 per person, including music and parking), but in terms of your inability to resist the temptation to purchase maple products on-site.
The festival is held at sites across Highland County on the western side of the Shenandoah Valley. It’s always the second and third weekends of March (March 10-11 and 17-18 this year), and it’s the perfect time to sample syrup (and lots of foods lathered in the syrup, such as maple chicken) and visit at least a couple of sugar shacks, i.e., cabins or groups of cabins where sap is collected for the lengthy syrup-making process. You’ll hear locals refer to their “sugar bushes,” which comes from Canadians who have always talked about harvesting their farms of trees as “forest,” otherwise known as “the bush.”
Tens of thousands of visitors — some via tour buses — flock to the pristine area for the county’s biggest annual event: watching the harvest of the sugar, the making (and tasting) of the syrup, and shopping (approximately 125 contemporary and country artisans and crafters from a dozen states sell their wares).
Photo courtesy Highland County Chamber of Commerce
A name like “Highland” is a tip-off that you can plan on a lot of walking when you visit, as few people can park close to festival sites, and the terrain with the maple trees is hilly. We talked to people whose pedometers showed they’d walked more than four miles during the day. Go hungry and eat early, because some things sell out quickly. Plan on $10 per person per meal, though you get all of the pancakes (and buckwheat cakes, my favorite) you can eat at that price, including the authentic syrup. You’ll probably want to sample maple doughnuts, maple popcorn, peanuts or walnuts coated in maple syrup, soft maple ice cream, and maple milkshakes. Items to gift or bring home include granulated maple sugar, maple fudge, maple lollipops, and, of course, the syrup, in sizes ranging from miniature jugs to gallon containers.
Valerie and Pat Lowry, owners of Back Creek Farms, told me on New Year’s Day this year that they “kind of hibernate in January because we know what’s coming” — a minimum of 12-hour days, with Pat lighting the morning fires while Valerie cooks breakfast. After breakfast, Valerie boils down water and collects the buckets hanging from trees nearby on land that’s been in the family more than three generations while Pat drives to collect the sugar water from “bushes” at other nearby farms.
Photo courtesy Back Creek Farms
After the sugar water is boiled down to syrup (40 to 55 gallons of sugar water make a gallon of syrup), the Lowrys finish it over more precise heat and filter it for bottling. Though they have modern machinery to help speed up the syrup-making process, they still work with the sugar pan used by Pat’s great-grandmother. This slower method of cooking the syrup down over a wood fire, Pat explains, infuses it with a slightly smoky flavor unmatched by syrup hurried through modern methods. Though this takes longer, “there’s something strangely magical,” he says, “about the maple-scented steam rising from the pans over wood fires. It’s an addiction that you just have to feed.” For this “addiction,” the couple boils down approximately 16,000 gallons of sugar water annually for 400 gallons of syrup.
The Lowrys open their farm for tours during maple season, but during the maple festival they can be found at their booth on the courthouse lawn in the county seat of Monterey. Folks who want a longer conversation with the Lowrys — or who just want a relaxing mountain getaway — can rent the cabin they own. Valerie will tell you about making special transparent-yellow Highland applesauce in summer and simmering apple butter down in autumn.
Highland County
Good to Know
The population of Highland County — which forms the western border of the Shenandoah Valley — was given as 2,321 in the 2010 census, making it the least populous county in the commonwealth.
Getting There
From Richmond, it’s a three-hour drive to Monterey. Take I-64 west, then U.S. Route 250 west.
Playing
Check out entertainment and sugar-farm schedules and other festival events, along with year-round attractions at the Highland County Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Council website, or call 540-468-2550.
