Our mission is to bring all of our customers a quality maple product that they can feel good about purchasing. In our work we seek to bring some good to our world. We recognize that the way we run our business can have very important impacts on other people and the environment, so we strive to carefully evaluate our decisions and make the choice that will be beneficial to us, other people, and the planet.
The environment is something we are very conscious of in every part of our work. We are Certified Organic by VOF and you can find a link to to their website at the bottom of this paragraph. Their website details what is required to be Certified Organic for Pure Vermont Maple Syrup. They state that "Producers shall take the necessary steps to protect the sugar bush ecosystem" and "ecologically sustainable forestry" is a major Organic principal. The principals of Organic sugaring are something we already practiced before we became certified. We also are Certified Bird Friendly and we manage our woods to provide good habitat to a variety of birds and other wildlife. Recently we installed solar panels and derive power from the sun to power our sugaring operation.
Our tubing system snakes through the woods to efficiently collect sap from trees, but tubing is all made of plastic. We recycle our old tubing and we avoid creating very much trash by doing this. We don't take ATVs into the woods during wet periods unless we absolutely need to because it ruins trails, can create erosion, and contributes to sediment running into streams, rivers, and lakes. We carry out improvement cuts on our sugar bush (take a few trees per acre) according to our Organic standards and our Forest Plan and encourage tree diversity so that many different kinds of wildlife will be present in our woods. A monoculture of maple trees is not healthy because it limits the species of wildlife that will exist in our woods and leaves the forest more vulnerable to insect damage. These are just a few of the aspects of our work where we limit our negative impact on the earth. Please ask us any questions you have about how maple sugaring affects the environment and how we handle these issues.
The Dunkley Family
1362 Old Stage Road, Westford, VT, 05494
Westfordsugarworks@gmail.com
Call Us 18028251591
Our Mission Statement
The Environment
Organic Vermont Maple Syrup