Maine maple syrup Sunday, sugar houses in Maine.
Every year Maine maple sugar house farm producers open up their woodlot operations. The public gets to sneak a peek. Go behind the scenes for how the maple syrup actually gets collected and refined. To sample and see all the work to transform clear watery liquid sap into what gets boiled down into the honey amber golden syrup.
Maine maple syrup Sunday where the forty to one boil it down maple syrup production woodlot sap collection happens.
The long hard process gets explained by local Maine woodlot tree farmers. To get what you drizzle over tall towering stacks of flap jacks, my by far favorite Maine maple syrup application. Pancakes, ploys taste better with Maine maple syrup. Swimming, drenching Maine made food items in the liquid topping we all love so much.
You can not stop spring desperate to be sprung in Maine.
The seasons change with or without you. The pandemic kinks the hose a little in how the Maine Maple Sunday operations will flow this year on March 28th. But the sap is on tap and it’s almost showtime. You can not stop Mother Nature pair up with Jack Frost. Where the two tag team to yearly produce another batch of highly addictive amber gold Maine maple syrup.
Over 100 Maine Maple Sunday syrup collecting sugar bush tours ahead in this 38th annual event.
All the family friendly entertainment to sample the maple syrup products coming to a sap collection venue near you. From York to Aroostook County, Maine maple syrup tree tapping demonstrations are going to happen ready or not. The fun activities to sample the all natural syrup sweetener await. Mark the date, please circle March 28th a couple times in red on your kitchen calendar. To make sure not to forget. That it’s that time again. For all the Maine maple syrup producers statewide to join together and promote some great maple products.
Let’s check in with Ed and Pat Jillsons to see what a Maine Maple Sunday open house looks like pre-pandemic with the magic of video.
Here’s the Maine Maple Sunday map of sugar houses to find one or more near you “celebrate approaching spring” open house tours.
To protect the public adhering to the state’s COVID 19 safety protocols, Maine maple syrup farm producers will step back. Spacing it out to creatively and safety do the show and tell sugar bush demonstrations. But nothing can stop the excitement surrounding Maine maple Sunday when spring syrup is collected from tapped trees around Vacationland.
While out on the McIntyre Road touring a Maine river front land property listing last weekend, I spied with my little eye the hanging galvanized buckets. Hooked securely to sap taps on maple trees across the road, the inspiration for this next Me In Maine blog post clicked. Like a minister looking for the next week’s sermon, why not ask folks out in the audience what comes to mind from two words, maple syrup?
And do you think log cabin maple syrup or the lady with the bandana smiling at you?
Or Maine maple syrup no matter what the price of the supermarket jug. Pure, natural Maine maple syrup, woodlot to your family table please and thank you. There’s your sign, that’s your brand. Settling for nothing but the best, forgetting all the rest of those light weight, watered down imitations full of fructose and God only knows what else that we all know if bad for your body right?
New England maple syrup, do you thick of log cabins and the state of Vermont?
Well move over Bernie Sanders and Ben and Jerry’s, the state of Maine produces more than 575,000 gallons of maple syrup yearly. Over $27 million dollars from Maine maple syrup production flows into the state’s economy. More than 560 full and part time jobs generate the sugar shack sap house excitement.
If there were no Maine maple sugar houses, it would produce a gaping hole cavity of over $17.3 million in worker’s wages.
Does it hurt a maple tree to tap the sap? Is there a right and wrong way to vampire the live giving fluid? Isn’t natural tree sap needed to jump start the new buds that create the green hardwood solar collectors to continue forest stand growth?
How would you like a high speed drill coming at you from all angles to look for a mainline sap artery to slow drip into the hanging bucket weighing you down?
You know drilling out a tooth cavity is not the most enjoyed Maine recreational activity. But like a colonoscopy, Maine humorist Tim Sample says you’ll get through it like a Maine winter.
What maple trees can be tapped for the best syrup? Maple syrup can be made from any species of maple tree. Trees to tap for the sap are sugar, red, silver, black maple and box elder varieties. But the highest natural sugar concentration maple syrup is from the sugar maple.
Many maple species lack a high enough concentration of sap sugar… kinda anemic and not your super donors. Like down at the Red Cross lay down, roll up your sleeve and give the gift of life.
These light weight minor league maple trees mean you need even more watery sap to collect and boil down for syrup magic. With up to 60 gallons of maple tree sap needed to produce just a gallon of that precious golden syrup.
Here’s one video on tapping Maine maple trees and how to do syrup sap correctly.
I first got the bug about what if there was a local sugar bush maple trees to tap the sap for rich tasty syrup from my Dad.
On the Maine farm my four brothers and I grew up on, the long driveways of stately maple trees were tapped yearly. For way smaller but sweet treat syrup production on the farmstead kitchen gas stove. Sometimes using a wood heater to boil it down. But something larger scale was always on the back burner in my Dad’s thoughts. When just a little shaver of about seven, my Dad fired up the 1966 Snow Jet to head to the maple tree heavy woodlot. The sled were rode on purchased from my Uncle Carl Hagan who was the blue snowmobile dealer in Cary Mills, Maine.
Together, Dad and I made the trek to the 100 acre family woodlot in Ludlow Maine. To weave the snow machine around the ridge of tall hardwood maple trees. To survey them for the best plan if we ever created a sugar bush, a sugar house to create the maple syrup from our own Maine woodlot.
Dad had lots of irons in the fire and was quite the entrepreneur.
With little free time already spoken for to kick off the sugar house maple syrup dream, it did stop him from the mental layout of just how he would do it. To create an intricate series of tubing for sap collection up in the Ludlow Maine woodlot where we yearly gathered firewood to heat our homes. Lack of enough hours in the day to pull it off, Dad still had a vivid detailed vision he shared with me of a large sugar bush maple syrup operation. The one he saw in his head where just everything would go from his life long study and passion for the heavily wooded maple tree forest terrain.
Complete with large long hand made wooden tables with picnic style benches to slide along to find your place for the celebration of a new maple syrup batch.
Walls that open out and up to let in the natural light. Open sides of the forest dining room utilized for fresh frosty air. Served up with baked beans, pancakes, sizzling bacon strips, smothered corn fritters, sweet breads, sweet glazed donuts all with a common ingredient of Maine maple syrup. A communion ritual to invite in all your friends, family and neighbors to celebrate the approaching spring renewal of life. To quell the hunger for new Maine maple syrup infused in the yearly event up in the Aroostook County woodlot.
To introduce young and old to the sound of the crackling fire under the steaming maple sap evaporator woodlot scene.
As they pushed food around their tin plates in the sugary maple syrup for the bath before open up the hatch and down the gullet. Dad saw maple syrup as one more agricultural endeavor to sponsor to get Maine farmers away from mono-culture thinking. Of potato, potato, potato with a little grain in the crop rotation on small family Maine farms. The one that desperately needed to diversify to avoid having all the eggs in one basket. Income on a small family Maine farm has to come from many sources. To assure you stay on the family patch of dirt passed down through the many generations. To assure someone is around to feed the rest of us that don’t farm.
After a long Maine winter, even Pa Ingalls touted the medicinal health benefits of maple syrup used in the Little House in the Big Woods too.
The all natural elixir that requires a lot of hard work to collect the sap. Then the fun part of maple syrup making of collecting it bucket by bucket. To pour the clear watery sap into an evaporator for the boiling it down. Tending the wood fires to steadily reduce the maple tree sap into the 40 to 1 evaporation. To distill the amber gold slow moving liquid used so many ways. The alternative to white sugar, do you add Maine maple syrup to your fresh brewed morning coffee? Is the Maine maple syrup used in your cooking or to make candies? Are you planing to take in the sights this Maine Maple Syrup Sunday and support the local producers?
One more old fashioned Maine sugar house maple syrup production video.
Another pre-COVID Maine Maple Sunday sugar house operation video to stir the bug to attend one.
I remember seeing an old sugar house up behind my Mom’s home place on Benn Hill in Hodgdon Maine.
When all the cousins rotated our home locations week to week to play Sunday after church. While the Aunts and Uncles all socialized and caught up on local events. Thank you for the stopping by today to read, watch and learn about Maine Maple Sunday that has happened for the last 38 years and getting bigger and better than ever.
These Maine maple syrup sugar house open houses can provide up to 50% of the operation’s golden profit.
Highly important and more than ever this year to recover from pandemic losses as everything we know as normal went through a blender and got reconstituted. This is what’s happening around the “Crown of Maine” for Maine Maple Sunday plans . Up here in Aroostook County, the garden of Maine when talking maple syrup production this year. A lot of Maine maple syrup producers add honey to what they produce and sell like Spring Break operation in Smyrna Maine.
Please make an effort to attend a Maine Maple Syrup Sunday open house sugar house tour or two near you this year.
Remember, no farmer, no food. Think about that when you enjoy whatever is served up three times or more a day. Wherever you hang your hat when the dinner bell rings. The support for the local Maine maple syrup farm producers. Support for the local sugar bushes, the Maine maple Sunday syrup producers is more important that ever this year as we come out the other side of the pandemic tunnel.
I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573 | info@mooersrealty.com | MOOERS REALTY 69 North ST Houlton ME 04730 USA