In my last post, I mentioned we had visited three operating sugarhouses while we were in Vermont. Today, I will highlight the second visit which was Roy’s Maples, where Charla and I met Bryan and Jeremy Davis.
This operation is close to me, in that it borders the farm I grew up on in Vermont’s NEK (North East Kingdom). I have fond and comforting memories of summers filled with noisy farm machinery and the smell of freshly baled hay. I often watched the summer crop-gathering progress of Bryan and his father Roy while I was driving hay wagons to and from the fields to the haybarn that would feed our cattle for the winter. This was hard work and I applaud the farmers of years past and those today for everything you do.
Roy’s Maples is a fourth-generation family operation where, like my grandfather and father, sap was originally gathered with horses and sleigh. Today, Roy’s Maples is tapping 4,500 trees and utilizes a series of tubes tied to each tree. The tubes get bigger the closer to the sugarhouse they get. This is to accommodate the volume of sap that is flowing from all the trees.
Charla and I had taken our ATV to the Roy’s Maples' sugarhouse. We could see smoke coming out of the stack and steam coming out of the sugarhouse. The last time I had spoken with Bryan was 25-30 years ago. I knocked on the sugarhouse door and opened with a cheery hello. With my grey beard, and weighing in 40 lbs. heavier than years past, it took a minute for Bryan to remember and recognize who I was. I explained that Charla and I were going to bring the old Fortin homestead sugarbush back to life and that I needed to speak with experts for some advice. During our introduction, I’m sure I looked a little bewildered as I paused mid-sentence.
My attention was directed to the evaporator where I could see small curls of steam bobbing at the edges of the front syrup pan. I kept getting waves of the sweet smell of maple sap boiling. My senses brought me to earlier years for a moment.
Both Bryan and Jeremy began talking in earnest about the family history and pictures they have on one wall of the sugarhouse. Bryan communicated, with a sense of responsibility, the years of wisdom he had gathered about the sugaring process in this area of Vermont. Bryan talked about how he and his father had concluded that a reverse osmosis machine was right for them. A reverse osmosis, referred to as RO machine, is where sap is pumped through a series of very thin membranes that separate sugar molecules from water molecules. This reduces the amount of water in the maple sap, so it takes less time to boil the sap down into maple syrup. Click on this link for a video of Bryan and Jeremy's operating sugarhouse.
JEFFREY R. WAKEFIELD, of the University of Vermont, in a 2018 article from https://www.uvm.edu/news/story/proctors-latest-maple-innovation-weekends, One of the most time-consuming aspects of maple syrup production is boiling down sap, which is 98 percent water and only two percent sugar, into syrup, 67 percent sugar, a process that is done in an evaporator, a large flat plan positioned over a steady heat source. In this same article, Tim Perkins, of the Proctor Maple Research center stated, It takes about 43 gallons of raw sap to make a gallon of syrup, 11 gallons of concentrate at eight percent sugar and 5.8 gallons at 15 percent.
Bryan and Jeremy highlighted and affirmed the benefits of an RO reducing time in the sugarhouse boiling and a compelling argument that there is a significant reduction in the amount of wood needed to heat the concentrated sap into maple syrup.
Our conversation continued with the process of laying out tubing and mainlines in the sugarbush. When asked what our approach would be, I replied that we planned on doing it ourself. In a non-self-deprecating way, and with confidence, Bryan offered the following testimony: “We set up this sugarbush ourselves which was a lot of work, however after seeing what professional tubing installers can do with their knowledge and use of grading tools, we have had half our sugarbush reworked by professionals, and we will be having them do the other half in the future”.
After a full hour and more of discussion, Charla was asked if she wanted to fire the arch. This is opening the door to the evaporator and filling it with wood. This is a large evaporator and thus it takes a lot of wood to fill it up. For those that haven’t had the opportunity to fire an arch before, the heat produced within an arch can turn quarter inch steel to an orange glow. Once in my early years, while firing an arch, my overalls started smoking when I wasn’t paying attention. Charla dawned firing gloves and with great pride, and credence, she filled the arch with wood. I have a video of Charla firing the arch. Charla will guest blogger in a near-future blog post where this video will be featured.
Charla and I thanked Bryan, and Jeremy for taking the time to show us their sugaring operation (owned and operated with their wives Sue and Jen),the wall of family history,
the communication of RO benefits, and the value of using professional tubing installers.
Just months before my father passed away (about a year ago) my mother and father expressed what good neighbors Bryan and his wife Sue were. For years, Bryan has brought my parents a mid-sugaring-season gallon of maple syrup and would sit a talk about local events and changes in the farming community. Thank you, Bryan and Sue!
It should also be noted that my blog post https://www.accordingtojean.blog/post/i-could-bear-ly-breathe where I walked into the woods following a bear, the woods mentioned is the maple sugarbush of Roy’s Maples.
On our way back to Pennsylvania, Charla and I discussed what we had learned from Bryan and Jeremy and decided to hire professional installers for our tubing and mainlines. I chuckle as I’m writing because that will make the project more expensive. I don’t know how much yet so I will keep the amount needed for the project at the $59,050. With a follow-up text to Bryan, we ordered 10 gallons of syrup from Roy’s Maple (http://www.roysmaplesyrup.com). We do like syrup, but Charla is doing test recipes for “Pennvertucky”. We are excited about Pennvertucky! Look for a future blog post where we explain the details of Pennvertucky.
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