The sign at the road tells you most of the story before you ever park: "Pasture Raised — Plew Farm, Mount Holly, Vermont," with smaller boards hung beside it for chicken, pork, and eggs, and a Vermont maple sign on top promising syrup sold here. What the sign can't tell you is how long the family behind it has been at this work. The Plews have been making maple syrup for seven generations, on and around this same Mount Holly hillside.
The family's sugaring story runs through Grandpa Hawkins, a respected sugar maker who worked his arch just up the hill from where the farm stands today. The Plews still boil the way he did — over a wood-fired arch, in small batches, with the whole family gathering in the sugar house to fuel the fires, watch the boil, and taste-test every batch. It is slow, smoky, hands-on work, and it shows in the jug: their hand-crafted syrup has earned Best in Class honors, and the family treats the sugar bush itself as a trust, stewarding it as carefully for the wildlife that lives there as for the sap that runs each spring.
Maple may be the heritage, but it is only part of the farm. Across 150 acres, the Plews raise pasture-raised meat chickens, turkeys, and laying hens, along with pork and grass-fed, grass-finished beef — animals raised on fresh pasture and non-GMO feed. The farm's own description of its mission is plainspoken: it is "dedicated to providing a local alternative to commercially produced factory food." In an era of anonymous supply chains, Plew Farm is the opposite — you can see the pastures from the farm stand door.
That farm stand, in a weathered board barn on Healdville Road, is where everything comes together. The freezers and shelves hold the farm's own beef, pork, and chicken, eggs gathered from the laying flock, and the full maple line — syrup, maple cream, and maple candy. Around those anchors, the Plews stock goods from some two dozen neighboring farms and makers: cheeses (including Crowley Cheese, made right here in Mount Holly), fresh-baked breads, honey, dairy, produce, and pantry goods. It functions as a small, curated farmers market that happens to be open five days a week, and locals treat it as the town's pantry as much as a destination.
Visiting is easy. The farm stand at 1966 Healdville Road in Mount Holly is open Wednesday through Sunday, noon to 5, and closed Mondays and Tuesdays. One request, chalked on a board by the door: because this is a working farm, dogs stay in the vehicle. In season, the farm has also offered free guided walking tours of the pastures and sugar bush, ending with a maple soda back at the stand. Healdville Road runs between Mount Holly and Ludlow, so a stop at Plew pairs naturally with a day at Okemo — or with a swing by Crowley Cheese, a few minutes away in the same town, to complete a very local loop.
Seven generations in, Plew Farm is still doing the two things it has always done: making syrup the old way, and feeding its neighbors. The only real difference is that now the rest of us are invited. See the full page on Green Mountain Guide: Plew Farm.