Madava Farms at Crown Maple

Though it may conjure up storybook images of quaint Vermont shacks, maple is actually a booming industry, aided by the syrup’s popularity among paleo types and maple water’s incarnation as a trendy new functional beverage.

At Crown Maple, the second largest maple syrup producer in the United States, sap-farming is now a high-tech affair, involving satellite surveys and real estate scouts. 

This episode of Gastropod takes a behind-the-scenes tour of Crown Maple’s “sugar chateau” to learn how the thin greenish sap is sucked out of the nearby forest and boiled into syrup.

Update as of April 2018: Crown Maple is no longer regularly open to the public, but does host special events throughout the year where the public can visit.