Page 12 - MARCH/APRIL GRANITE LIFE

Page 12 GRANITELIFE.ONLINE March 2023 Maple Weekend in March Offers a Sweet Way to
By donna rhodes
Those who have spent any time in New Hampshire during the month of March know that it’s a great time of year when, after a long cold winter, the sun begins to shine brighter. Tem- peratures start to rise, all culmi- nating in the flow of sap through the abundance of maple trees throughout the state and signal- ing the onset of spring.
Due to that natural occur- rence, the New Hampshire Maple Producers Association promotes Maple Weekend each March, encouraging the public to visit the state’s many maple producers, where they can learn more about this age-old tradition of turning sap into a delicious ta- bletop and cooking condiment.
In the early days, sap from the maple trees was harvested by drilling holes into a tree and then placing spouts interrupting the sap flow through the trunk. Sim- ply put, the sap was collected in metal buckets and taken home, either by horse-drawn wagons or motor vehicles in later years, to boil over a wood fire until it thickened into syrup. Since those
Get Over the Winter Blues
beginnings, what has since be- come an annual early spring industry has continued to grow, making a once labor-intensive task much easier.
Brett Robie of Alexandria has been harvesting sap and boiling it down for more than 17 years. His end product is then used to not only bottle his maple syrup but use it in the making of other maple products. Over the years, he has studied the science of sapping and upgraded his col- lection process at the three large maple orchards he taps in order to make it more efficient.
“It used to take me up to nine hours to collect the sap, but tub- ing and vacuum pumps have cut that way down,” Robie said.
Tubes running from tree to tree are strung to run down to a central collection tank mak- ing the job much easier than the days when people snow-shoed through the maple groves, dump- ing the sap into their buckets and then sliding it on sleds back to their vehicle. From there, it was hauled home, where it was boiled for hours over a wood fire until it became the syrup they sought.
Tubing that crisscrosses a
maple forest today is much less labor intensive as gravity draws it down to a collection tank. It is not without its drawbacks, though. Robie said he and al- most all other maple producers have had issues with wildlife breaking through their lines as they travel through the woods.
“Bears like to bite into the big tubes to get to the (sweet) sap, and squirrels will chew the lines, too,” he said. “You just have to go out and find out where the break in the line is.”
Along with gravity, vacuum systems now help transport the sap to a collection tank, and Robie said there is a lot of mis- understanding about that pro- cess.
“There’s a lot of science in- volved in this. The vacuum’s not sucking sap from the trees as many people think. It’s actually tricking the trees into thinking there is less atmospheric pres- sure. The less pressure there is, the more sap they produce,” he explained.
It’s all just a part of the new methods and improvements in the process of maple production.
The winter of 2022-23 has been mild, and that started sap
flowing a bit earlier than usual. However, Robie said it takes cold nights and days above freezing to get the sap moving up the tree, and that is just what is being seen this year.
“I first boiled on February 18 this year, and I’ve had good runs every day. I’m hoping it will be a good year,” he said.
Robie’s sugar shack, the build- ing where he boils the sweet wa- tery substance down into syrup, is located at 217 Town Pound Rd. in Alexandria, but he is just one of more than 120 other mem- bers of the N.H. Maple Produc- ers Association that will take part in this year’s open house.
The 2023 Maple Weekend is scheduled for March 18-19. Over that weekend, the public is invited to stop by any of the loca- tions listed on their websites not only to purchase maple products, such as syrup, candies, maple mustard, donuts, and much more but learn more about the actual process of turning sap into syrup.
The N.H. Maple Producer’s Association Web site, nhmaple- producers.com, not only lists statewide sugar shacks people can visit and support this month but also has an educational col-
oring page for children and a host of delicious recipes people can download. Among those are recipes for Maple Mustard, Maple Barbecued Spare Ribs, Maple-Orange Glazed Vegeta- bles, Maple-Apple Bread, and more.
Local members of NHMPA who will hold an open house over Maple Weekend are:
Young Fellas Sugar House is a small operation in Franklin, NH located at 216 Smith Hill Rd, Franklin, NH - 603-568-8041
Sugaring has been apart of the families history for over 8 generations. The current opera- tion started as a small hobby be- tween a few friends and has now grown into a yearly tradition. Long gone are the days when we boiled outdoors and had to hang tarps around the evapo- rator to keep the wind out. We have grown to approximately 350-400 taps spread out across the country side. Spring is a time of the year that we all look for- ward when we can stand around the evaporate swapping stories and watching the steam rise. We welcome you to join us.
Walker’s Farm at 2760 Walker Rd. in Bristol; Bucklin’s Sugar House, Alexandria; Grandpa’s Sugar Barn on Rte. 4 in South Danbury; and Brookside Maple in Ashland. For more statewide listings, please visit their website.
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