While March means basketball for many people, for Evelyn Baker it has another meaning entirely.
“It’s maple madness,” she told me shortly after I arrived at Baker’s Maple, the Bainbridge sugar house owned by her son Reed. And she wasn’t kidding.
To say this is their busy season would be an understatement. Right now they are collecting sap from the 4,621 taps they have in Chenango County and parts of Delaware County every day. That includes 586 buckets, all emblazoned with ‘Baker’s’ in green, which are emptied by hand.
Reed and his staff struggle to keep up with the thousands of gallons of sap they get in every day, some of it from trees they own or “rent” (property owners are compensated in maple syrup, of course) and some from other producers who have more than they can handle. This last happens more than you’d think. While I was there, Reed sent his uncle out to collect 4,000 gallons from a farm in neighboring Delaware County who begged him to take it off his hands.
But of course collecting it all is just the beginning of the process which turns the sap, which is about 98 percent water, into the sweet syrup we all know and love. It’s a lengthy process, and a hot one. (The place is like a sauna when the furnaces are burning.)
Reed and his crew spend as many as 18 hours a day boiling the sap down, at a rate of 800 gallons an hour. Depending on the sugar content, it takes roughly 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of the finished product.
Yes, that’s a lot of raw material for a fairly small yield. Reed said he considers himself lucky when sap comes in with a 3 percent sugar content, rather than the usual 2. What accounts for the difference? According to the maple expert, sugar content depends largely on where the sap comes from. If it is from trees in a wooded area, where they tend to grow taller and have smaller crowns, the sap typically has a lower sugar content. Sap from stand-alone trees, with large crowns, tend to have a higher sugar content.
While Reed’s sugarhouse contains more than $100,000 worth of equipment which automates the process, it still requires constant monitoring. Samples are taken, temperatures are recorded and there is even a bit of stirring required to ensure that the finished product has the right sugar content – approximately 66 percent. At that point, it is finally maple syrup.
The maple goodness is siphoned off into 30-gallon drums to be later bottled, or used to make one of the other fine maple products Baker’s is known for. Maple cream, maple jelly, granulated maple sugar, maple coated nuts and, of course, maple sugar candy are some of the products you can buy in the Baker’s Maple store or from their website, www.bakersmaple.com.
You’ll also find syrup itself in every shape and size container, ranging from extra dark for cooking to light amber. Reed explained to me that the darker the color, the more maple flavor. So the dark stuff is the best for cooking and to drizzle over your pancakes. The lighter syrup has a more subtle maple flavor and is, of course, lighter in color, which makes it better suited for making maple cream and candy. (It still tastes great on pancakes, too, in my opinion.)
I, of course, had to ask what the difference was in terms of the production process, and was a little surprised by the answer. I expected to be told it was boiled longer or something like that. Instead, Reed gave me a little chemistry lesson.
The sugars in the sap are sucrose, he explained. Bacteria, which exists naturally in the sap, breaks down the carbon bonds in the sucrose, creating fructose and glucose. The more glucose, the darker the color of the syrup.
I had a lot of questions and, lucky for me, Reed has a lot of experience giving answers. Unlike many maple producers, Baker’s Maple is a year-round operation, and Reed is definitely considered a local expert in his field.
In addition to his full line of maple products, Baker’s Maple also supplies everything you’d need to tap your own trees, boil up the sap and even can the finished product. At least three local producers and someone interested in getting into the business, stopped by while I was there.
There’s been an influx in interest this year, he said, which he attributes to high bulk prices last year. Not all of these new producers will stick with it though, Reed told me. Some quit after the first year after they realize how much work it is.
Reed himself has been in the business for going on 28 years. He started Baker’s Maple in 1982 with just 75 buckets. That first year he processed 1,950 gallons of sap and made 50 gallons of syrup. It’s something of an understatement to say his venture has grown since then. Last year, they processed 95,395 gallons of sap.
It’s too early in the season to predict what this year will bring, Reed said. So far, the weather has been ideal with nighttime temperatures dropping below freezing and then heating up during the day. This creates a kind of vacuum which keeps the sap flowing, he explained. The forecast looks good over the next couple of weeks, but that could change.
I’m looking forward to a return visit to Baker’s Maple, partially because I need another fix of the maple cream Reed let me sample. I may even stop by this weekend or next in honor of Maple Weekend.