We were lucky to catch up with Emilia Medick recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Emilia, thanks for joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

My husband John and I started small with maple syrup producing as a hobby and a way to be outdoors during the end of winter. It becomes an addiction every year to see how many more trees you can tap and how much you can make. Our first year we tapped 19 trees in 2013. We progressed to around 80 taps and buckets and then began the discussion of using maple tubing to make gathering the sap easier especially during the muddy season. My husband’s mother was a great inspiration to us. During her passing she wanted to ensure that the property was taken care of and John and I became the stewards of the land. To be able to make sure we were able to keep the property and make it pay for itself we went full in on something we were already doing, maple syrup producing. Our first year as Hop City Maple we tapped 500 trees and have been steadily growing over the last 3 years. The 2025 season we expect to be at around 1ooo taps.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

John and I very much love the outdoors. John loves the challenges to make, build and figure things out. I support him and work with him to accomplish his visions. Our sugar shack is a 24 x 24 building that we built ourselves. We actually sawed all the lumber used in it, on a sawmill we built ourselves. All of these things I have to give credit to John. When he wants to do something, he is great at figuring it out. We now have 3 small children, 5 and under, that we want to bring them up to know what hard work is and what it can accomplish. They love being out in the woods with us, playing, imagining, and learning. Family is very important to us.

We never envisioned that our little dream of making maple syrup would have touched so many people. We put a lot of effort and our hearts into making what we feel is the best product and to share it with our community has been amazing. We love to promote other farmers and small businesses in our town and community. We love to collaborate with those that hold the same principals.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Our social media growth, I would like to say is organic. We have a small following but I like to think that everyone of them are our customers. When I started our social media pages it was hard to get into a story telling role. I had to make myself post every 3 days or so. I started to realize that I should be taking video of everything. Even if it didn’t have a theme yet or place, i eventually figured out I could figure a use for it later on. I think that people want to see alot of behind the scenes of what acutally goes on in your business. They want to walk along with you and expereince it. Just showing products doesn’t really gain alot of views. The best time for us is during maple season for our social media posts. Outside of the season it gets a little bit difficult for us in terms of content. We also interact a lot with people and we also like to share our local loves… other small businesses, funny work memes and rescuse animals

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

I’m always surprised about how many people know about us. We have been slowly growing geographically and trying to reach our farther customers. So this means I usually drop in with samples to different businesses that i think may be a good fit for us. I usually wont step on other producers toes if i see them in a store already. So its been alot of out of the box thinking for us on where we can sell our products other than out of our farmstand at the farm. Our partnering with retail locations has really helped get our name out there. They also promote us within their social media and this helps spread the word. We both can gain customers by promotion of each other. Some people can’t travel to the farm so for us, them being able to reach us at retail locations is great.

We also have been slow growing because of our supply. We can only make so much maple syrup in a season with so many taps. The weather also plays a role in that, where if it doesn’t cooperate and we have a bad year we have a more limited supply. Because the demand has increased we continue to grow, run more lines, collect more sap, and have more syrup.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.hopcitymaple.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hopcitymaple
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hopcitymaple
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzXlIdYpYp4DtNG89myjg7w
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/hop-city-maple-ballston-spa

Image Credits

Hop City Maple