LOCALadk Magazine

LOCALadk 11 I've always had a certain disdain for seeing a large puddle of wasted maple syrup returned on a plate at the end of a meal. Do they have any idea how much time it took to make that sweet nectar? I doubt it or they would use more care: maple syrup is called "liquid gold" for a reason! I have made it my mission to en- lighten the masses on the long and beautiful process. Sugaring season is a relatively short amount of time, all things considered. It's usually only one month that sap runs. For us at a higher elevation in Lake Placid, that's usually around mid-March to mid-April. Howev- er, for larger operations, it's a year round endeavor to prepare for when the sap flow arrives. It can be costly to miss a big sap run day, and you will not get that missed sap back later in the season. Plastic tubing, as opposed to buckets, is the industry standard at this point for larger operations. It stays up all year, unless one of our frequent wind storms knocks it down. Then there is much work to be done chainsawing and repairing damaged tubing. If it's a big snowfall year like this winter, unearthing buried lines from three feet of snow adds to the fun! Tapping every tree must be done by hand each season, and then every tap must be removed as soon as possible once the season has ended. It's import- ant to tap the tree in a different location every year, but when done with care and intention a tree can be tapped indefinitely. I love this aspect of maple work: generally what is best for production also encourages proper care for the trees and the forest, whether you consider yourself an environmentalist or not. If using buckets, they must be first rinsed and cleaned, along with the other equipment in the sugar- house. Cleanliness and sanitation is one of the less glamorous aspects of the job but undoubtedly one of the most important to making good quality syrup. With sap flow arriving, the next step is to boil the sap down to make syrup. This is going to take a lot of time: it generally takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. Larger operations have the luxury of a reverse osmosis machine that can considerably increase the sap's sugar content to save boiling time, but regardless, it takes a long while watching steam boil off an evaporator before you're making the good stuff. While this is time consuming, it is a labor of love. I really do love it and enjoy the process. I got my start in the maple world working solely in the woods for South Meadow Farm in Lake Placid and have recently taken on a role at Heaven Hill Farm running their maple op- eration, including the boiling. Heaven Hill Farm shares an appreciation for time with its rich history. I spend most days in an original 1942 log built sugarhouse. Henry and Mildred Uihlein started their sugaring operation using entirely buck- ets. They tapped about 2,000 trees with a hand drill, all collected by hand with the aid of horses and sleds. They then increased to 3,000 buckets with the help of a tractor and a heavy gas powered drill. Can you imag- ine emptying 3,000 buckets every day by hand? I have the utmost respect for my predecessors and the grit it took to make that happen. Today, Heaven Hill enjoys some modern methods while still paying homage to the past and the tra- ditional methods. We have a small reverse osmosis machine which increases the efficiency of the boil, and we utilize plastic tubing as the primary form of sap collection. That said, all of the tubing is 100% gravity fed from the top of the hill all the way to the boiler, with no pumps or vacuum used, just the landscape. We still use some buckets, especially to allow school groups and maple weekend visitors to experience tapping their own tree. We have about 500 taps, fewer than Henry and Mildred managed, but with a shift in focus more to educating visitors rather than only focusing on production. Will Madison inspects the sap lines in the early sugaring season. "Liquid gold" results from many hours of hard labor, converting sap to syrup.

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