Fadden's Sugar House
Fadden Family Wins Best Maple Syrup Award
The winner of the 2008 Carlisle Trophy was J.H. Fadden & Sons from North Woodstock.
At the January 26, 2008 annual meeting of the New Hampshire Maple Producers Association in Lebanon, a competition was held for the best maple syrup produced during the 2007 season in New Hampshire. Producers of maple syrup from all over the state vied for the coveted Carlisle Trophy. Each entry must have previously placed first, second or third at a New Hampshire fair, so each was outstanding syrup. The judges’ scores disclosed only a fraction of a point between the entries, showing a stiff contest.
The Fadden Family like many early settlers of the mid 1800’s harvested maple sap and produced syrup and sugar for their own use or to trade for supplies. It wasn’t until the 1930’s that they got down to producing maple products in a big way when they acquired a stand of maple trees, built a large sugarhouse and purchased equipment required for commercial maple syrup production. Always striving to produce top quality maple products, their efforts over the decades have been rewarded with many blue ribbons at various fairs, four previous Carlisle Trophies and a Governor’s Cup for the best maple syrup in North America. With this year’s award the Fadden Family has won the Carlisle Trophy five times.
Over the last ten years the Faddens have replaced all of their collection buckets with plastic tubing and upgraded the rest of their equipment to stainless steel or food grade plastic. Today they have over 5000 taps connected with about twelve miles of pipeline. Jim, along with his wife Sue, sons James & John and some hired help annually produce over 1,000 gallons of maple syrup which is used or sold at Peg’s Restaurant, another family owned business. They also market on the Internet at nhmaplesyrup.com
The Fadden Family’s modern sugarhouse is located next to Peg’s Restaurant in downtown North Woodstock and contains state-of-the-art equipment. Maple sap enters the sugarhouse where it pumped through a reverse osmosis machine which removes up to 75% of the water. The resulting concentrate is then boiled down to the syrup stage in a 4x12 oil-fired evaporator. After passing through a filter press, the crystal clear amber syrup is packaged into various containers with use of a 40 gallon canning unit.
Fadden’s Sugarhouse is open to the public whenever they are boiling. They are also open during New Hampshire Maple Weekend and can accommodate bus tours and groups by appointment. People who would like to see a modern maple operation that makes award-winning syrup should stop by Fadden’s and experience five generations of maple perfection.
Why our Maple Products are special........
