Yeager Constitutional Arms

Yeager Constitutional Arms is a family owned local gunshop, located 13 miles from the farm in Henryville, Indiana. For the second consecutive year, the shop is generously sponsoring the Woodland Indian Educational Program demonstration. Jessica and Mark will demonstrate Native American syrup and maple sugar making at the festival. Their program is extremely entertaining and educational for all ages. 

As a special promotion this year, we will offer customers with a valid receipt from Yeager Constitutional Arms 10% off any purchase in our Sugarstore during the festival. In turn, Yeager Constitutional Arms is offering a 10% discount on ammunition and a 5% discount off firearm purchases with a valid receipt from LM Sugarbush. Please ask for this offer at checkout. 

We are extremely grateful for their generous sponsorship. 

Yeager Constitutional Arms

3180 South Pixley Knob Road

Pekin, Indiana 

(812) 967-1992

Please check out their Facebook! 

https://www.facebook.com/Yeager-Constitutional-Arms-120216938165804/

Behind the Scenes - Volunteers

Behind the Scenes – Volunteers

Imagine that you are 17 years old and a Junior in high school. You
leave your warm bed at 6am on a Saturday, get dressed, and go to work
in an old, cold barn. Instead of catching up on sleep or spending time
with your friends on the weekend, you stand on a cold concrete floor,
serve 3,000-4,000 people a meal, and go home covered in pancake
batter, maple syrup, and bbq sauce. This is not a plot from a new
reality show coming out, but it is the reality for the youth Group at
Grace Lutheran Church in New Albany, Indiana.

Every year we turn our Sugarhouse, an old, cold, non-insulated barn
into a restaurant for the 4 days of the Maple Syrup Festival. Battling
the weather, frozen water pipes, and frozen fingers, the Grace
Lutheran Church youth group will help prepare and serve the delicious
pancakes, waffles, maple BBQ chicken and pork to our festival
attendees. It’s hectic, it’s hard work, but you won’t meet anyone
without a smile on their face.

The kitchen and food service staff are volunteers from various local
charitable groups. It started 25 years ago with the CARE women’s group
from Salem, Indiana, serving a simple pancake breakfast. Over the
years, groups have come from the Henryville Community Church, Bunker
Hill Christian Church, Fisherman’s Paradise Men’s Group, as well as
many others. Our menu has changed from pancakes and syrup, to a full
breakfast and lunch/dinner menu.

This is the second year for the Grace Lutheran Church youth group
volunteering in the kitchen. Last year (2015), the proceeds from the
kitchen service were used for renovations to the youth room at the
church. The group purchased new furniture and supplies, making the
youth area an inviting haven for fellowship and community activities.

This year, the youth group is fundraising for a Haiti mission trip in
the summer of 2017. The youth group, along with several adult
chaperones from the congregation, will travel to Haiti to help with
the local vacation bible school program, volunteer at the local
hospital, and help with several construction projects. The cost of the
trip is $2,000-$3,000 per person. While you enjoy a delicious meal,
you are not only helping your local community, you are helping fund an
outreach program across the world. On average, we donate
$7,500-$10,000 (or more!) per year to the groups who staff and run the
kitchen and food service area.

In addition to the kitchen area, the candle making activity in the
Children’s Activity Building is run by several volunteers from the
Operation Christmas Child program. This program is the largest
Christmas program, filling shoeboxes with goodies and helpful items to
needy children around the world. 100% of the profit from the candle
making activity is donated directly to this wonderful organization.

Lastly, the parking attendants this year will be volunteers from our
local high school football team (Go Musketeers!!). The football team
is fundraising for new equipment this season. A donation will be made
to the team in exchange for their hours worked at the festival. They
might even get in a weekend workout if the parking is muddy!

Haha - Who are we kidding? The parking is always muddy. Welcome to mud
season on a farm in February and March.

-

Tapping and AMAZING WEATHER

We are tapping!! We survived the snow apocalypse that turned out to be
nothing. The weather forecast was calling for up to 18 inches of snow.
Then it changed to 6-8 inches, then 1-4. The farm got less than three
inches total. People to the east of the farm weren’t as lucky. Most of
the east coast is completely covered right now. I live about 10 miles
from the farm and we got about 4 inches.

We had a smaller than normal tapping crew this year. We sent out three
teams on Saturday and two teams on Sunday. We have changed our tapping
equipment this year. We are using the battery powered DeWalt drills
instead of the large gas powered drills. The guys are so happy. The
new drills are extremely light weight compared to the gas powered
drills. They bought extra batteries and swapped the batteries out over
lunch. The tapping crews were all extremely happy with the new drills
and the drills and batteries are working great.

New drills

Old drills 

We aren’t completely finished tapping yet. We have finished the middle
hill of our sugarbush and we are almost finished with the back hill. I
think one more full day of tapping and we will be done. The weather
looks AMAZING for sap weather.

With two poor years in 2015 and 2014 due to the extreme weather
conditions, we are praying for a good year this year.

PERFECT sap weather!!! 

I worked around the farm house, made the guys lunch, and worked on a
few small projects. Jen and I went over our to-do list on Saturday and
we only have three pages of stuff left to do. I feel like we are doing
a great job this year getting all of our jobs finished. Most of the
things we have ordered for the store have arrived. I am going to print
price labels this evening and start working on pricing all of the
store items.

I’ll let everyone know how the sap runs this week. Keep your fingers
and toes crossed!!

January 20 Update

We had a very productive working weekend this past week. We are
preparing our woods for tapping within the next week to ten days.
Depending on the weather, we will either be tapping our trees this
weekend (the 23rd and 24th) or the following week and weekend (the
week of the 25th). Depending on which weatherman you watch, we could
get rain or up to 18 inches of snow this weekend. If it snows that
much, we might just pack up and go skiing. It is the time of year when
Robert (my husband) is glued to his phone and the weather stations,
watching the weather predictions. As of now, I think we ***SHOULD***
get 3-6 inches, but the forecasts look like the snow might stay South
of us. Keep your fingers crossed!!

Back to our weekend work progress. I actually helped work in the woods
on Saturday. I usually save all of the jobs close to the house for
myself, but the guys needed an extra set of hands to run some new main
line. The tubing system that runs from tree to tree is a small 5/16
inch flexible plastic tubing. The tubing system connects to a one inch
main line, which runs to holding tanks.  We had some pretty bad
flooding over the summer and some of the main line was either damaged
or destroyed by water.

We were working in the creek. We all bought really good waterproof
boots last year and I was thankful for them today. Great investment –
you really can’t put a price on nice dry feet.

I have also started ordering things for the Sugarstore at the
festival. Some of the items we aren’t capable of making ourselves so
we try to find local producers. The maple candy, maple sugar, maple
nut treats and clusters, shoups seasoning are all made locally in
Indiana. We are also working on a special mug for this year since this
will be the 25th festival.

We have sent out our vendor applications. I think we will have about
10 new vendors this year. Most are local, but we have a few coming
from the Ohio and Kentucky area. I’m hoping the weather holds out
better than last year. Other than our syrup production, I think the
vendors are hit the hardest when we have bad weather.

I’ll post more often when we start tapping and making syrup. Hard to
believe that we only have 37 days until the festival!!

Working Weekend

We had a busy working weekend at the farm. We took advantage of the nice weather and got a lot of outside work completed. 

Robert, Mason and Nic (Jen and I helped a little bit), split about about 22 ricks of wood in two days. We were a little behind on wood this year, so we had a load of seasoned log ends delivered (about 10 ricks once it was all split). We also had a few large trees which had toppled down over the summer which the guys cut up and split. 

I cleaned the music cabin,

Picked up sticks around the buildings,

And put a new coat of polyurethane on all of the building signs.  

The weather was awesome for this time of year. We had sunny weather in the low 40s. 

We plan on tapping in 2-3 weeks depending on the weather. Still lots of work to do before then! 

Jenny and I sent out vendor applications on Saturday and Jenny sent out staff emails today. If we missed anyone, please let us know! 

And so it begins...

The 2015/2016 has started. The guys have spent the last few weekends preparing the tubing system in the woods and cutting firewood. We will tap in late January/early February depending on weather conditions. The future weather predictions are calling for a warmer winter compared to the last few years, which is great news for us.

I'll start working on the vendor applications right after the new year. We are also taking a break from deliveries and shipping orders from December 18-January 8 so we are able to spend more time with our families over the holidays. 

The farm is looking great. While the guys were in the woods last weekend, Jenny, Mason and I cut back all of the landscaping and cleaned the farm house. 

We also put up our Christmas tree at home. Mason picked it out and did most of the decorating. 

We will be at the farm most day tomorrow (Saturday). If you would like to purchase syrup before the holidays, please call to place an order (812-964-4491). 

Wholesale Locations

Our syrup is available at the following locations! If you are interested in a specific size, please call the location directly for accurate availability. 

Our farm is open by appointment. We also meet local customers in the Salem and Louisville area if our schedules allow. Please call 812-967-4491 or email sugrbush@wcrtc.net if you have any questions!!  

Bloomingfoods (3 locations)

3220 East Third Street
Bloomington, IN
812-336-5400

316 W. 6th Street
Bloomington, IN
812-333-7312

614 E. 2nd Street
Bloomington, IN
812-822-0235

* Bloomingfoods carries all sizes of plastic containers.

Good Earth Natural Food Co.
6350 Guilford Ave.
Indianapolis, Indiana
317-253-3709

*Good Earth carries all sizes of plastic containers. 

Pogue’s Run Grocer
2828 E. 10th Street
Indianapolis, Indiana
317-426-4963

* Pogues carries all sizes of plastic containers, excluding gallons. 

Apple Acres
9104 Indiana 37
Bedford, Indiana
812-279-9721

*Apple Acres carries 8oz, pints and quarts of plastic containers.

Bear Wallow Distillery
4484 Old State Road 46
Nashville, IN 47448
812-657-4923

* Bear Wallow carries 8oz and pints in plastic containers, and a nice selection of glass containers. 

Brown County Winery
4520 State Road 46 East
Nashville, IN 47448
812-988-6144

*BCW carries 8oz and pints in plastic containers, and a nice selection of glass containers.

Nashville House
15 S. Van Buren Street
Nashville, IN 47448
812-988-4554

*Nashville House carries 8oz and pints in plastic containers, and a nice selection of glass containers. 

Rainbow Blossom
3738 Lexington Road
Louisville, KY 40207
502-896-0189

*Rainbow Blossom carries all sizes of plastic containers.