WILLOW CREEK — The steam rising from Niall O’Flaherty’s sugarhouse on Ridge Road has been a familiar March sight for 30 years, but this season it comes with a welcome mat.
O’Flaherty’s Maple is offering guided sugarhouse tours for the first time, inviting visitors to watch the evaporation process, taste syrup straight off the boiling pan, and walk a half-mile trail through the family’s 2,000-tap sugarbush. Tours run weekends through April 15, or as long as the sap flows.
“We’ve always sold syrup, but folks would pull in the driveway and not know if they could come see the operation,” O’Flaherty said. “This year, we’ve got signs and a schedule. They can see exactly where the syrup comes from.”
Tours cost $5 per person and include a sample of all three grades — Fancy, Amber, and Dark — drizzled over vanilla ice cream. A retail shop in the sugarhouse sells jugs, maple candy, and O’Flaherty’s popular maple-coated peanuts.
O’Flaherty said opening weekend drew 45 visitors, many of whom had never seen a working sugarhouse.