Schoolyard Sugarbush

Schoolyard Sugarbush started in the yard of a one-room schoolhouse in New Hope, New York, where Dan Weed's family tapped century-old maples along the roadway and boiled sap on a wood-fired flat pan as a homeschooling project. Dan returned to New Hope from college in 1991 to make syrup with his father Donald, and built the first dedicated sugarhouse there in 1993.

In 2014, the family bought a former dairy farm in Newfield and turned its wooded hillside into their primary sugarbush. Today Dan runs the operation with his wife Holly and their four daughters, tapping roughly 45,000 trees across four counties in the Finger Lakes region.

The syrup is Certified Organic and NY Grown & Certified. Sap moves from tree to drum the same day it's collected, and the sugarhouse uses reverse osmosis and a steam evaporator to keep boiling time and fuel use down.