As soon as the winter season comes to a close, maple sugar farmers are out the door with buckets and tubing equipment harvesting sap from their local area.
Every year around Presidents Day, devoted farmers and maple sugar enthusiasts begin an age-old tradition of tapping trees. In Canada and much of the Northeast, the process of tapping trees begins to create maple products such as syrup, cream or candies.
Maurice R. LaFlamme is one of the small-time enthusiasts of Western Massachusetts. LaFlamme is the owner of the Stone Silo Dome Maple Farm. The Massachusetts Maple Producing Association reports there are more 300 maple syrup producers in Massachusetts alone.
In 2013, about 2 million gallons of maple syrup was produced in New England according to the United States Department of Agriculture. Five years ago LaFlamme caught the tapping bug.
“I had been toying with idea for a long time and my cousin came over one day with her children and she had been reading some folklore and the methods some local Indians had used for tapping,” he said. “She actually came up with some reeds and we drilled holes and put reeds in and had a pan under it and it didn’t take much, she got me started.”
Maurice has about 600 taps attached to trees around his property.
“So I started off with those eight taps,” he said. “Then we went to 100. Then we went to three-and-a-quarter. Last year was 550 and right now I’m a little over 600.”
LaFlamme collects more than 100 gallons of sap from his many buckets placed throughout the woods and produces almost 10 quarts of syrup from his sap from his collection of black maples, sugar maples, and swamp maples around his yard. When spring time comes around the maple trees thaw, allowing the flow of maple syrup. During the season, the sun does most of the work.
“It all depends on how the sun is hitting on the top and on the trunk,” he said.
LaFlamme doesn’t like to keep his sap more than two days; otherwise it decomposes and spoils. So when sap is collected it’s only a few hours before the boiling starts.
“To turn sap into syrup, cream or candy it must be heated over 200 degrees to burn off water and convert the sap into whichever consistency the cook desire,” he said. “Myke Ryczek is the owner of the The Maple Hut in Agawam, Massachusetts, He’s been making maple products for 10 years now. When I met Mike he had been experiencing a problem with his primer.”
But even despite the little hiccups along the way, Mike finds a way to make his syrup.
“We probably made about 30 gallons,” he said. “On a small scale that’s pretty big, on a big scale that’s… they could make that in an hour so it’s all relevant to the scale of your operation.”
With the season getting warmer, maple sugar enthusiasts will be scrambling to get the last of their precious sap before the nights warm up too much.
Nathaniel Szymanski is a student at Western New England University.
