Sugaring, pasturing, and a little winter recreation make multiple uses of Tucker County’s Highland View Farm.
Managing his four-acre sugar bush in Canaan Valley a century ago, Robin Reed Kalog’s grandfather spaced his trees wide. It was very different from our typically dense West Virginia forest, but he was an inquisitive and intuitive farmer who liked to try all methods.
Grandpa Reed’s Highland View Farm sugaring operation ended years ago. “But when Mike Rechlin from Future Generations University (FGU) saw the grove, he said it was clear that it was planned from the get-go for syrup,” Kalog says. Wide spacing would mean more leaves and, through that, higher sugar content in the sap. It works: She tapped her first 86 sugar maples in 2020, and the sap came in at 2% sugar by volume, compared with the state average of 1.5%.
You’ve been to Highland View Farm if you’ve ever skied at White Grass Ski Touring Center. Kalog’s father inherited the farm in the 1960s, and he entered a cooperative arrangement with White Grass—in winter, skiers enjoy a corner of the property, and in summer, the White Grass crew lends a hand. The farm passed to Kalog a few years ago. Her background is in hospitality, but she knew the place well even when her grandfather ran it, and she’s embracing the legacy. She continues the relationship with White Grass as well as the longtime presence of cattle on the farm, pasturing 100 cow–calf pairs and two bulls for a neighbor.
Long interested in sugaring, Kalog jumped at FGU’s offer to help plan and install a tubing network that would let her act as a satellite sap collector, selling her harvest to Canaan Valley Maple for processing. The first year’s revenues covered her out-of-pocket costs for the infrastructure—though not all of her costs. “It’s labor-intensive,” she says. “I’ve been working on being more efficient.” Five seasons and 121 taps in, her process is streamlined, and she feels like sales have by now paid for her labor, too. She plans to expand. Rechlin believes she could more than double the number of taps in Grandpa Reed’s grove.
Like her grandad, Kalog brings an active mind to farming. An experiment into growing shiitake mushrooms on logs from dying beech trees rather than on oak, for example, gave her a bumper crop. She’s making the most of the opportunity to steward her family’s land. “I love the forest—the more I learn about it, the more I want to learn,” she says. “And I’m meeting so many great people. Farmers are the best.”
Beneath the Canopy
From tree saps and syrups to goldenseal and ginseng, forest farming is an always- growing set of rediscoveries and new discoveries requiring its own knowledge base. The membership organization Appalachian Forest Farmer Coalition offers training and networking to support forest farmers in making the most of these opportunities. appalachianforestfarmers.org, @farmingforests on FB
READ MORE ARTICLES FROM WV LIVING’S SUMMER 2024 ISSUE
Read the other stories in our forest to fork feature
FOREST TO FORK
SWITCHING TO SYRUP
TREE TO BOTTLE
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