Silloway Maple’s sugaring business started in the early 1940s when Bette Lambert’s parents, Paul and Louise Silloway, moved to Randolph Center from East Montpelier Center and purchased a small dairy farm. Paul hung buckets on the trees in the early spring to gather sap and boiled it at night after milking the cows.  

Over the years, they bought a crawler tractor to pull the gathering sled and built a new sugarhouse in 1958. They produced an average of 500 gallons of syrup each year and always welcomed visitors, including many schoolchildren, to come during boiling. Sap lines were set up in 1978, but not without setbacks from wildlife, which damages the lines yearly, and the weather that makes the production season short, intense, and unpredictable. Alternating freezing and thawing cycles decide when the season begins. Eventually, the family invested in a reverse osmosis machine to remove part of the water before boiling, a tremendous technological advancement and an energy saver. 

The family built a second sugarhouse in 2013, with space for more production to accommodate the busy agritourism and maple creemee business. Now, visitors come year-round from around the world to learn how maple syrup is produced. Silloway Maple has expanded the number of its taps over the last 12 years and expects to have up to 27,000 this year. Traditional wood fire, solar power, and practicing regenerative forest management all complement each other to produce this delicious product sustainably.  

Silloway Maple’s syrup, cream, candy and sugar have received many awards. The family takes great pride in producing Vermont’s finest and sells its products in Montpelier, Burlington, and at the Stowe Farmers’ Markets, as well as in its sugarhouse store and many small stores and restaurants across the country.