He has the right to do what ever he wants. He is a business man and he has millions or billions to work with. Maybe its more jelousy than anything, as far as selling syrup for that price I guess if you can get it alright good for you. Here is the part I don't like about it. when you charge that much for syrup I don't see it as a a nitch or anything like that your using marketing to fool people that are ignorant to a product. It has become the american way which is sad and marketing scams are what sell products in combinations with attractive displays packaging etc. I personally think that if your getting that much for syrup your taking advantage of people, I just don't think its right. Is there a big market for maple yeah, its huge world wide, we are lucky enough to live in the maple producing area of the world but we still shouldn't take advantage of people by charging that much. just my opinion.

As far as selling your syrup by the gallon for so cheap, well a few things first you really need to stay competative with the surrounding sugarhouses if you have competetion, and competition is good, its alot of hard work as we all know and you should be paid for your hard work. but if your fine with selling syrup for less than its value(again just my opinion) then thats fine too. you have a right to do that too. I am not going to bash you for it. just thinking fairly of you and your competition and you customers. now this is just my opinion. Everyone that know that keeps bees and sells the honey is charging $10 a pound, I just think its too much, So I only charge $8 a pound. could I get $10? I am sure I can I don't wanna bring the market price down its just my opinion. The bees make it not me!!!

In anycase I think in the beginning of Crown maples ventures put a bad taste in alot of people's mouths by rumors of tapping state land in the catskills that was owned privately owned and the owners paying taxes on it couldn't do anything with it because of government friends in low places. grants to get high effiecient maple equipment even though he afford his own. But they since moved the operation and dumped a ton of money into it. I guess you could look at it as a good sound business model and its nice to have money to spend on a multi-million dollar facility, but I know if I were going to a sugarhouse there is just something that is nice to see a wooden sugarhouse with the sweet smell steam rising and coming out of the coupula, unfortunately like everything else related to food shortly we are all going to have to conform to the demands of the industry to be efficent with steam hoods, and the serilization of the white walled food industry. It just looses its romantics when you think about it going in that direction but we all know it will.

this year I raised my prices a bit not much just by $1 for quarts and pints and $2 for 1/2 gallons, I explained to my customers that is was a bad year and costs have gone up a little but as long as I have a more normal season next year I will bring the prices back down to normal and everyone was fine and understood completely.

Oh yeah and what Dr Tim said is true you can't say its organic unless youre certified. but you can say all natural, although all natural and anything else is just feel good marketing words.