The 2019 Maple Season Has Begun

The recent February thaw started the maple sap flowing in the maple trees in Monterey, Virginia. On Feb.4 it warmed up enough for Puffenbarger’s Sugar Orchard to post a picture on their Facebook page of a tube with the maple sap flowing through it.

Monterey, in Highland County, is located beyond the Shenandoah Valley in an area that boasts the highest mean elevation of anywhere east of the Mississippi. An enchanting land of high mountains, pristine valleys, and green woodlands awaits you in Virginia’s very own Little Switzerland. The land is marked by high and narrow ridges, reminiscent of a landscape you’d discover in Switzerland.

In March, the Highland Maple Festival, the second largest Maple Festival in the United States, will celebrate the southernmost commercial Maple Syrup producing region in the nation. The Highland Maple Festival features craft shows, dances, sugar camp tours, music and dance performances, and, of course, food, particularly pancakes with maple syrup and maple doughnuts.

Fabulous Fruit Gift Basket

Visit the Highland Maple Festival on March 9 & 10 and March 16 & 17 to learn about their unique maple industry. Designated a "Local Legacy” by The Library of Congress in 199, this festival of 61 years, attracts upwards of 50,000 visitors from across the states. Sugar camp tours provide a unique and educational glimpse of a rapidly vanishing way of rural American life.

We are proud to include Maple Syrup from Monterey in many of our Virginia gourmet food gift baskets.