Baird Farm, N. Chittenden Vermont

Vermont: the Green Mountain State. Vermont: land of Maple Syrup. Vermont: ah, the joy of being on a family vacation. Long car rides leading to factory tours of Teddy Bears and Ice Cream. Did we hit every tourist trap in western Vermont? You bet we did. Or if we didn’t I’d like to know the ones we missed.

On two of those car rides we noticed signs for the Baird Farm. I made a point of stopping there on our way out of town and I’m glad we did. The setting was right out of one of Christopher Kimball's letters from the editor pieces at the beginning of every Cook's Illustrated. We pulled up an unpaved driveway and came face to face with a German Shepard. Before there was time to wonder what to do, Mr. Baird came out of the farmhouse with a smile and a wave. The dog turned out to be very friendly, unless you were one of the cows in the barn which the dog delighted in barking at. We walked the grounds for a few minutes, showed the kids the cows and then went in to the farmhouse to buy some maple syrup.

Now we’d had ample opportunity to buy syrup before on the trip. Every tourist stop in Vermont sells syrup. The Calvin Coolidge Presidential homestead sells maple syrup. The Vermont Teddy Bear Factory sells maple syrup. Ben & Jerry, well I’m not sure if they sell maple syrup, I was in a tie-dye daze and riding a sugar buzz from too much ice cream at the time. The gas station sells maple syrup. The Maple Museum with their exhibition hall as excuse for a gift shop of course sells maple syrup. Maple syrup is to Vermont what slot machines are to Las Vegas.

I wanted to buy syrup from the source and the Baird Farm fit the bill to a T. Mrs. Baird thanked me for buying the syrup from them and I told her that we had sought out someone like them to spend our maple syrup dollars with. We took home a quart of Vermont Grade A medium amber syrup which was my favorite. Turns out its most people’s favorite too. We also bought a jar of the maple butter which isn’t butter at all just maple syrup whipped up into a spread. We talked with the Bairds, petted the dog, got back in the car and went on our way.

Here's a picture of the Baird Farm sugar house taken from their website:



One interesting thing about maple syrup is that it’s all made the same way. There are four grades: Grade A Fancy, Grade A Medium Amber, Grade A Dark Amber and Grade B. There is no effort made to distinguish the syrup beyond this point. No one ever says that their trees produce a superior sap or that one producer is more skilled than another. This isn’t like wine where someone is aging his syrup in a special oak barrel while someone else is aging his in a stainless steel tank. There are just a set of guidelines as to what qualifies each type of syrup and that’s that. I’m surprised that some marketing genius hasn’t come along and tried to carve out some niche beyond the real Vermont Maple Syrup tag that we see at any decent pancake house across the country but to my knowledge this hasn’t happened, yet.

Check out the Baird’s website. They ship syrup anywhere in the country and the prices are very reasonable for what you get. You also get the satisfaction of knowing your money is going directly to a farmer and that’s something you can’t get at any tourist trap that I know of.

Baird Farm
65 West Road
N. Chittenden, Vermont 05763
802-483-2963