Andover’s Zach Barton Loves Making Maple Syrup

Zach Barton’s Trail Side Sugar Shack, located on Currier Road in Andover. Photo: Donna Baker-Hartwell

The weekend of March 18 – 19 was the annual statewide Maple Weekend. Trail Side Sugar House, at 246 Currier Road in Andover, was ready for it with 450 gallons of Grade A maple syrup. I visited owner Zach Barton the day before the big weekend. His sugar house was last year’s winner of the Best Sugar Shack In New Hampshire award.

Zach Barton stands in the kitchen of his sugar shack, in front of 20 plus 15-gallon stainless steel barrels of syrup. He says that his retail supply of syrup produced each year lasts until the next year. He produces about 560 or more gallons a year. Caption and photo: Donna Baker-Hartwell

A native of Andover, Zach has been making maple syrup his whole life. In 2013, he built the Trail Side Sugar House and went into business. Over the past ten years, he has invested in state-of-the-art equipment, which includes the wood burning evaporator that reburns the smoke from the wood fire, making it more efficient as a fuel source with minimal exhaust smoke. A “reverse osmosis” filter system separates the water from the sap before it goes into the evaporator. This cuts the boiling time down significantly. The separated water is pure and is then reused for cleaning the equipment and flushing out the system between batches.

Zach reports that this year has been a good year for maple sugar production. He typically starts tapping/tubing on the first of February and can usually continue into the second week of April. He tubes 2,300 trees, and last year made 563 gallons of syrup. Half-way through March, he had already made 450 gallons and believes that he will surpass 2022 levels.

Zach is a member of the New Hampshire Maple Producers Association, Inc., which has over 350 members. NHMPA, along with the New Hampshire Department of Agriculture, Markets and Food has recently made changes to the grading of syrup. There is no longer a Grade B but instead a “very dark Grade A”. A lovely Maple Grades poster hangs inside the Trail Side Sugar Shack. Zach also displays the color of every batch he processes in the shack’s kitchen window. He says that darker grades tend to come as the warmer weather comes. So far this year, the dozen or so samples of each batch are light amber and shades of gold. The taste is beyond words – delectable and divine come close.

New Hampshire Chronicles produced a segment on Zach in April, 2022 called “Making Maple Dreams Come True”. Readers can find it online at wmur.com/article/nh-chronicle-the-trail-side-sugar-house/39530029#.

(Zach Barton is a graduate from Merrimack Valley High School and works full-time for the State of New Hampshire as a Construction Technician.)