“Pure and simple,” is the order of business at PA Preferred® Butler Family Maple, where Jody and Jennifer Butler produce pure maple syrup and specialty maple products on a century maple farm in Tioga County.
The Butlers are proud members of the PA Preferred. Butler says, “Having the brand identity allows our customers to connect with other like minded businesses in PA. We love to promote and educate our customers about locally sourced food and sustainable agriculture. PA Preferred supports these ideals and helps provide a platform to help us with that. After all, our teenage daughters have both utilized PA Preferred materials, ideas and resources within their own education, 4-h, local fair and with friends.”
Learn more about how the Butlers wear many hats as family farmers, their most popular products and more in our Q&A:
PA Eats: What do you love about what you do?
Jennifer Butler: We love living and working in the nature of northern Pennsylvania. Our outdoor office is our sugar bush and our workshop is our sugar house. We live, breath, work and play in these spaces. It is not uncommon to eat meals there, do school work there and even play games there. Our daughters know these spaces as home. They have lived no other life than that of a sugar maker. To us, sugar season is truly a fifth season of our year.
Can you tell us about your most popular products:
Our maple syrup and maple sauces are very popular. Our products are popular among our customers because they each have a story and are hand crafted by us. When we sell products, we are selling a piece of nature that has crossed our hands. We are not making or selling products from an assembly line. If our products could talk, they would share laughter, tears, and an occasional disagreement, but a part of us nonetheless.
What challenges do you face, and how do you respond?
Our farm is a piece of our family, so it has molded into a business that reflects us. Our daughters have always been involved in deciding what our future looks like. The challenge comes with making it work in conjunction with our outside careers, our daughters’ activities and just being a family.
Juggling so many hats requires a great deal of dedication, time and patience on the part of each of us. This juggling act is difficult and even overwhelming, but it is important enough to each of us that we keep the hats all in the air. Some of them are more colorful than others and some of them we have perfected, but some simply stay in the air.
The Butler’s daughter was recently named 2024-2025 Potter-Tioga Maple Ambassador, an honor and new “hat” for the family to wear as they venture further into maple education and promotion throughout the state.
You can find Butler Family Maple‘s pure maple syrup and products like maple cream, maple sugar, maple rub, maple sauces and more in its online store and at the farm at Elkhorn Creek Rd., Tioga; (570) 835-4983.
This series was created in collaboration with PA Preferred.
PA Preferred® is Pennsylvania’s statewide branding program that promotes locally grown and processed food and other agricultural products.
- Photos: Butler Family Maple
