I Hereby Declare the 2013 Pre-Sale Closed

Pre-Orders for the 2013 Season are now closed, as of March 1st. We had an amazing last minute flurry of orders today, and want to thank everyone who helps support my love of sitting on a cold chair and watching water boil into the wee hours for a month each year. If it weren’t for you all, I’d have no choice but to have to consume all this syrup myself.

If you’re still interested in syrup from us, contact us. We’ll let you know if we run a surplus at the end of the season.

-Pat.

The Fourth Annual Maple Syrup Pre-Sale. Let’s Get It Ooooon.

 

(UPDATE 2/28/12 : Pre-Orders are now closed for the 2013 Season. Thank you to everyone for your support!)

We wanted to get a big-name celebrity to do a voice-over for this year’s announcement, but as it turns out that costs a LOT of money. So we went for the next best, and frankly, cheapest option: you are now reading this in Morgan Freeman’s voice.

Welcome to Occasional Creek Maple’s 2013 season, and year #4 of offering our friends and supporters the chance to satisfy their maple cravings. As in years past, we’re giving you the opportunity to purchase our maple syrup before we start boiling. You get your syrup at a reduced price, and you get to purchase in volumes that we don’t offer during the regular season (half-gallons, quarts, and half pints). In exchange, we get the operating capital we need to get the season started properly. It’s like were selling futures. We’re doing it like Wall Street, but without being big jerks.

Bring on the details:

• Pre-Order prices for 2013  are as follows:
  • 1/2 Gallon – $33
  • Quart – $17
  • Pint – $9
  • 1/2 Pint – $5
• Send an email to occasionalcreekmaple@gmail.com and let us know how many jugs you would like, and what sizes.
• We will send you an invoice for your order total through PayPal. This is the preferred method of payment for pre-orders. (You can make a payment with a credit or debit card on PayPal without having to sign up for an account.)
• We will totally take cash or checks.  If you choose this option over PayPal, please include that info in your original email. Keep in mind: we need to receive that payment before we begin boiling in order to hold your order.
• If you know us well enough that you see us occasionally in the wild, we can both take orders and accept cash/checks in person, and Patrick can now process a payment via mobile app. He’s quite giddy about it.
• Your syrup will be available for pickup at the sugar shack approximately two weeks after we begin boiling. We will contact you to let you know when we’ve bottled our first round.
• If you live too far away to pick up your order, we can mail it to you. Send us your mailing address in your original email so we can calculate the least expensive shipping cost to add to your invoice. We’ll ship it as soon as it’s produced and bottled.
• You are guaranteed to get the syrup you paid for. We are only pre-selling a conservative portion of what we expect to produce, so even if the season is a small one, we will still make enough to cover your order. In the event of a catastrophe that prevents us from making any syrup, we will refund your money.
• Pre-ordering will end on March 1st, or when we sell through the volume we’ve set aside for pre-orders.

Last year’s season started a good 3 weeks earlier than the year before. We have no idea what this season is going to do. In the past we’ve closed pre-orders when we started boiling, trumping the March 1st deadline. We will stick to the March 1st cutoff this year, but once we have sold through the volume we put up for pre-sales, that will be it no matter what the date is. As always, order early to guarantee that you get the syrup you want.

Well, that went fast!

And with the checking of emails this evening I am going to have to close pre-orders for the season. If you weren’t able to pre-order syrup, don’t worry too much. Last year we had plenty of syrup available to sell after pre-orders were filled, and we hope to this year as well. Still, we need to play it conservative on selling a product we’ve yet to produce. This is a very funny season so far, and it’s best that we hedge against it getting any funnier. Heck, here we are ready to light it up and start boiling a full two weeks before we even tapped last year! Very strange indeed. But like every year, we’re just gonna enjoy the ride.

Thank you to everyone who placed orders with us. You help keep us going every Spring. We truly appreciate your support.

The 2012 Maple Syrup pre-sale is now open!

Now in our third year, we are offering to friends of Occasional Creek Maple the opportunity to purchase their maple syrup before the season starts.  What we get from this offer is some up-front funding for supplies that help us kick-start our season. (Lemme see… need new fire bricks for the evaporator, a new stack, new storage bins) What you get is a guarantee that you’ll get delicious syrup once we start boiling, at a reduced price, and in quantities that will likely not be available once the season starts.

Something new we’re going to try this year is offering you the option to save a few dollars by providing us with your own syrup container. This really only works for you if you live close or see Sara or myself on occasion, and are planning on picking up your syrup. (If you were to insist on mailing us a container we’d be forced to sit you down and have a serious Economics 101 talk. So don’t be that guy.)

Finally, by buying our syrup you are putting us to work. I am quite sure of it. Therefore, you are a job creator. It’s true. 5 out of 6 economists agree. Don’t argue. Just bask in it. That’s right… baaaaask.

Here are the details:

• Pre-Order prices are as follows: 1/2 Gallon – $33;  Quart – $17, Pint – $9, 1/2 Pint – $5
• Send an email to occasionalcreekmaple@gmail.com and let us know how many jugs you would like, and what sizes.
• We will send you an invoice for your order total through PayPal. This is the prefered method of payment for pre-orders. (You can make a payment with a credit or debit card on PayPal without having to sign up for an account.)
• We will totally take cash or checks.  If you choose this option over PayPal, please include that info in your original email. Keep in mind: we need to receive that payment before we begin boiling in order to hold your order.
• Your syrup will be available for pickup at the sugar shack approximately two weeks after we begin boiling. We will contact you to let you know exactly when we’ve bottled our first round.
• If you live too far away to pick up your order, we can mail it to you. Send us your mailing address in your original email so we can calculate the least expensive shipping cost to add to your invoice. We’ll ship it as soon as it’s produced and bottled.
• You are guaranteed to get the syrup you paid for. We are only pre-selling a conservative portion of what we expect to produce, so even if the season is a small one, we will still make enough to cover your order. In the event of a catastrophe that prevents us from making any syrup, we will refund your money.
• Pre-ordering will end on March 1st, or when we sell through the volume we’ve set aside for pre-orders.

We still aren’t sure how early this year’s season will start, so unlike in years past we won’t close pre-orders just because we start boiling (since we may have to start boiling VERY soon). But, as mentioned above, ordering will close once we sell through pre-ordering volume, and that may happen before we start boiling, depending on the response we get. So get your pre-orders in now!

 

Boiling Schedule

Check here to see when we’re boiling. We also post updates to the Facebook page and Twitter. (Check the Twitter feed to your right —>)

Saturday, March 26th, 2011:

Boiling today from 10-5. Grab your Massachusetts Maple Month Passport and stop in for a visit. Don’t have one yet? We’ve got one for ya!

We have pints for sale! $11 apiece. Check or exact cash please. (Sorry! No time to make a bank run for change this morning!)

If ya liked it then ya shoulda put a pre-order on it.

Ladies and gentlemen, friends, family, neighbors….. maple syrup pre-orders for the 2011 sugaring season here at Occasional Creek Maple are CLOSED.

Cerrado.

Stay tuned! Taps will be in very soon and we may begin boiling as soon as this weekend to start filling all our orders.  The season feels like it’s gonna be a good one, so we plan to have more syrup for sale after those orders are filled.

The Enemy, Part Two: One of these things is not like the other

One of these bottles contains 100% Pure Maple Syrup. One of these bottles contains only 4% maple syrup and 96% brown rice syrup. If you read the labels it’s obvious which is which. If you were to remove the labels, however, even a seasoned maple syrup producer could be fooled as to what might be in the bottle of Log Cabin All Natural Syrup. This is undoubtedly what Pinnacle Foods Group LLC, owners of the Log Cabin brand, want the average consumer to believe.  This is what all makers of imitation maple syrups have always wanted: to put the idea into the consumer’s mind that their imitation product is the same as the real thing, only less expensive.

By law they can’t say it’s the real thing unless it actually is. Anything labeled “maple syrup” must be 100% Pure Maple. The label “maple flavored”, however, is not nearly as restrictive. For all I know, I could call a gallon of milk “maple flavored” if it sat open in my fridge next to a decanter of my own pure maple syrup – but I wouldn’t want to pour it on my pancakes. You won’t find the term “maple flavored” on a bottle of Log Cabin All Natural Syrup, though. This is probably because they felt it would contradict their claim of  ”no artificial flavor”.  The term “flavored” evokes images of something added, and additives have the stigma of being unnatural or artificial. The scant 1.5 tablespoons of real maple syrup in this product is undoubtedly pure and natural, but there’s no room for an argumentative essay on a product label. The fewer words, the better, down to and including using no words at all.

And this is exactly how Log Cabin All Natural Syrup intends to win you over – with no words at all. Their persuasive argument to you the consumer is their packaging, and their packaging has always been an attempt at misdirection. Walk past the selection of table syrups at your grocery and tell me how many of them are packaged in clear bottles. All of them (until now).  Clear bottles let you see the very maple looking artificially colored product inside. If they can get you to think, at first glance, that their product is the same as the real thing then your next question is simply going to be “Which is cheaper?”, a battle they will always win.

The current packaging for Log Cabin All Natural Syrup is just the next generation in the marketing shell game. They have packaged their product, (which in their defense does not actually claim in words to be maple syrup) into a container whose color, shape and style has ever only been associated with 100% Pure Maple Syrup.  I’m not even sure that I can come up with an apt analogy for this move, other than to say that if I were to put iced tea into a Jack Daniels style bottle and gave it a black label with white letters – you’d almost certainly be at the party before you realized that the contents of that bottle aren’t going to help you forget your crappy day.  A picture is worth a thousand words, and Log Cabin’s hope is that the mental picture of their product packaging is worth every last one of the thousand words you have ever associated with 100% Pure Maple Syrup. Add to this their paid placement of their product alongside jugs and bottles of the real thing, and their battle for your dollar is effectively won, without saying a single word, or running afoul of any existing law. What Log Cabin has done is genius, but evil genius.  To maple producers, it’s just insidious.

Pinnacle Foods is not likely to listen to the concerns of those whose livelihood they’re undercutting, but your local grocery store will. If the major grocery chains receive enough negative press about their role in this duplicity, they will be obliged to make it go away by simply shelving the Log Cabin All Natural Syrup where it belongs – with the  rest of the maple flavored table syrups.