Our History

Hillsboro Sugarworks is named for the mountain on which our sugarbush is located. Established in 1979 by the Folinos and now owned by Julie and Bill Heffernan. The Heffernans began their operation as Heffernan Family Sugarworks in 2008. 

Hillsboro Mountain has a long history of producing maple syrup. When the first settlers arrived in the early 1830s they found the mountain blanketed with sugar maples. For over 130 years, two families, the Beanes and the Sweets, sugared on the north side of Hillsboro Mountain.

Walking through the woods, you can still find old remnants of their farming and sugaring efforts – old sap buckets and the remains of sap tanks and evaporators along with cellar holes and foundations. Sometimes we will be startled by the remnants of an old barbed wire fence in an odd location in the middle of the woods.

We also discovered that one of the early Sweet family members was named Thankful Sweet. We took it as a good sign that this would be a great sugarbush. And it is. 

 

Found objects

The woods has a lot of history. There are old stonewalls, old roads, cellar holes, wagon wheels, a beautiful brass cowbell, the head of an old shovel that had been patched and re-patched and reused. All of these objects have been found while sugaring, thinning trees, and pulling spouts, in areas that now seem so remote, you might think no person had ever been there before. The woods have been lived in and lived from for many years. And for that, we are thankful. We continue making history on this piece of land that has been lived upon, farmed, hiked and appreciated by many for many generations.