Turtle Lane Maple Farm

So sad — this is their final year, and final weekend.
Thanks so much Turtle Lane Maple Farm for sharing your farm, your home, your hospitality, and your knowledge of the maple sugaring process with the children of North Andover and those of us who are no longer so young and who live from further away.
Per their website:
LAST WEEKEND EVER!
Posted on April 1, 2015 by tlmfadmin
This weekend will mark the end of our 12^th and final year of maple sugaring and hosting tours. If you ever wanted to see the process, learn a little and have some fun, this weekend is your last opportunity to join us for a boil. We will be hosting tours Saturday, April 4 from 9am — 4pm and Sunday, April 5 from 9am — 2pm. Hope to see you!

Turtle Maple farm has a great tour of the maple making process. The tour is both full of information and also very entertaining. There are samples of many products that is made with maple syrup. It is a great place to take your family for a day trip. Unfortunately this will be the last year according to Turtle Maple Farm. If you want to have have a very enjoyable maple tour, I recommend going here. Only 2 weekends left before they close their doors.

When you pull up you are in a housing neighborhood with regular houses, it does throw you off. When you walk down the drive way you will see the sugar shack. This guy does a very professional job at giving –very educational and down to earth too with kids. You are actually right there while the sap is being cooked. The system he uses is very high end and fun to learn about. This guy works a regular job but, during season is up all night collecting sap. He does the tours for the love of the craft. The tour/​talk lasts 15 min. There is no seating. Everyone stands around the sap cooker, but it is very safe and very clean. I loved it! Buy the products he has to make sure he stays in business. He does this tour for free. When we went they have a maple whiskey tasting for adults to try.

Really a wonderful tour. I went with another woman in her mid-​20s, and the farmers did a great job providing really thorough explanations of the maple syrup process, so that we learned a lot! And given that the room was full of dozens of children and their parents, it was a really clear and authentic experience.
They’re doing a wonderful educational job, and offer a lot of knowledge, fun, and samples for a free tour. They also DO NOT push people to make purchases in almost any way, which is refreshing. The adults seemed to respond to it, and I saw most families making purchases.
I highly recommend.

Family oriented fun maple syrup neighbourhood farm!
Who knew there would be such a great farm in North Andover.
Very knowledgeable owners, who are very passionate about their hobby! The farm is only open on the weekend, but a great place to take your kids to learn about Maple Syrup.
Also sampled the different grade maple syrup and it was all so good! My favourite is definitely the Grade B one!!!
so yummy!

Amazing place! We’ve done many a maple tour, but this tops ‘em all.
First of all, it’s awesome that it’s just a little family operation, and it’s so evident that these people love the process of making maple syrup. Their enthusiasm is infectious. The tour is extremely informative, much more so than any other maple place we’ve visited. You can learn a whole lot of maple history and information in an hour. You can also sample a whole lot of maple products in an hour, as we found out! Maple sap was actually quite tasty, the half-​boiled maple syrup was yummy, the fully-​boiled maple syrup was wonderful… and the list goes on. Maple cream, maple candy… all utterly delicious. And the whole tour — and all the samples — are free! Imagine that!
I made up for that by purchasing an entire bag filled with $ 41 of maple goodness to take home.
Great for kids and adults. I hope to make this part of our family’s springtime traditions.

Great family business. Educational for all ages. Friendly, funny, and free. Free samples and MORE!

Close to a perfect tour of maple syrup making! The only thing missing was a trip to see how trees are tapped and sap is collected. Otherwise, all other aspects were fantastic! Completely agree with points made by previous reviewers — great fun and educational for kids and adults alike.

Our North Shore Women’s Meetup Group attended the tour this morning. It was a great experience… while educational it was also entertaining. They mix a little humor in with the presentation and made it very enjoyable. You are given samples throughout the tour. Do dress warm, it is inside but still chilly, also wear boots a little muddy on way in. Can’t wait to go back next year and can’t wait until breakfast tomorrow to have more of this delicious maple syrup!
If your looking to pair this up with a lunch afterwards The Loft is terrific and they will give you a coupon for a free bowl of chowda!
Maple sugar tour is FREE:)

I’ve been wanting to see the process from sap to syrup for so many years, and have looked for farms to do so. Every time I’m in Canada or Vermont, I eagerly go to sugar-​houses that advertise tours, but generally they entail a small retail store and a 10-​minute video about the process in the middle of a maple grove. How was I supposed to know that the best option was a mere 40-​min drive away?
Turtle Lane has exceeded my wildest dreams in terms of educational value. Came in mid-​March during prime tapping season. The tour is ~1-​hour long and includes *eight* samples at various stages of the sap-​to-​syrup process (the last being a shot of maple whiskey if you’re of age!) including new sap from the tree. Farmer Paul and Farmer Kathy encourage questions and participation, and you can tell they are absolutely in love with their operation. They’re extremely knowledgeable about everything from the history of maple syrup to the science that goes into the process. They not only explain the process of making syrup, but also of maple cream, candy, sugar, etc… They don’t even pressure you to buy anything (it was never mentioned, and we had to ask if their products were for sale! Which thankfully, they are!). I think the best part was that Farmer Paul was so excited, animated, and patient; you would think after giving so many tours, you would wear out, but his tour equalled the excitement of someone giving their very first tour.
Also, the sugar-​house itself is beautifully rustic and they (+friends) actually built it themselves.
It’s a single unassuming room on a residential street, but I could have stayed in there all day. I learned so much about and it really was a dream come true. This is one of those experiences that makes me absolutely love New England. Thank you, Turtle Lane! And to everyone reading this review… what are you waiting for???

What a great place to take the family! The owner’s of the farm are so pleasant and make the experience worth going back. Great maple cream and now we are hooked.

Wonderful fun place to visit for one of their free tours! They give you tasting samples of the maple syrup pre, mid, and post boil while explaining the process in a funny engaging way. You also get to taste maple crème, candy, sugar and ice cream! Again– I can’t believe the tour was free given how thorough and fun it was. Great for kids and absolutely fabulous maple syrup. Go out and support our local farmers!

Found Turtle Lane Maple Farm online and we were delighted at what they have to offer! I took my children (ages 3 and 7) and all of us were totally engaged in the fascinating tour/​demonstration given by Farmer Paul. This family-​run farm offers free tours to the public which include great samples of sap, maple syrup, maple cream, maple candy, maple sugar and maple bacon homemade ice cream from another local in North Andover (Mad Maggie’s).
It is an easy 45 minute drive from Boston and well worth the trip. The 45 minute tour was delightfully entertaining and chock full of details I never knew about the process of making maple syrup.
I can definitely give this farm 2 enthusiastic thumbs up! A wonderful winter family activity… but if you can go without kids I’d recommend just as heartily!

My family and I have gone to at least 1 maple tour just about every year for the past 8 years. Most are just «OK» with a few really lame. I knew Turtle Lane was a private home operation so I did not have high expectations. We chose here over another one this year because of convenience.
However, We were completely blown away with the high quality and educational value of this tour. We learned more here than any other place we have been to in the past. I believe this is simply because Turtle Lane operates for the specific purpose of education as opposed to making money (nothing wrong with that). But where their entire focus is on education they really teach you a lot about the process. On top of that, they make it fun and engaging too.
During the tour you will get to sample maple from right out of the tree (surprisingly sweet still) all the way to candy/​sugar.
The tour itself is completely FREE — however Its also great to have a variety of maple products to purchase after and supporting a local small farm that is this good just feels great.
This is a tour only place — no restaurant. Which is fine. They do however have a relationship with a local ice cream place which we went to after that was also excellent. So we very much enjoyed that recommendation from them.
Check out Turtle Lane yourself and come away smarter than you arrived.

My wife and I have no kids but turtle Lane Maple Farm is a great trip for adults too! The free one hour tour will teach you all you could ever want to know about maple syrup and the free samples are great. don’t forget to take home some syrup, I suggest grade «B» if you really like maple flavor. Thank you Paul and Kathy for being so warm and inviting.

Such a great sugar house! Sample some maple syrup and the various forms it takes along the way and beyond. As you may know, the syrup gets richer the later it gets into the season, so go at the end if you want B grade, which is by far the most delicious.

What fun could a sugar shack be? What fun — a sugar shack can be! Paul and Kathy run a great operation at TLMF. I really knew next to nothing about maple syrup until my tour (other than there is a real kind and a fake kind). They make the real kind here. And quite a bit!
The ‘shack’ tour is a blast, in all honesty. To see the roaring fire of the evaporator was fun alone — but getting a close and personal l look at all the inner workings of the process is quite engaging. The tanks and tubes and tools are all explained in the tour — Paul and Kathy don’t miss a beat. The process from sap to syrup is quite intense (who knew, you don’t just hang a bucket on a tree!) — and you can’t not enjoy the experience. Especially with the sweet finale — yeah, samples! Not just of syrup, either — they’ve got some special stuff brewing there that you MUST try (starts with maple, ends with cream).