THE STATE OF SAP

Popularity rises as local producers wait for weather to cooperate

In the lull between groundhogs spotting shadows and robins returning to build nests, there is another seasonal rite of passage for the region — tree tapping.

Ohio is regularly among the top five maple syrup producers in North America. The sap, taken from maple trees before being rendered to syrup, accounts for $5 million of the state’s annual income, according to the Ohio Maple Producers Association.

Association President Karl Evans said it’s still too soon to tell how good 2019’s state yield will be. The recent spell of below freezing temperatures has greatly hampered tapping in the area with most syrup producers barely at a quarteryield of their typical drawings for this time of year.

According to Evans, this time last year, syrup producers had already collected half of their expected accumulations due to mild weather that coincided with tapping season.

“Most guys have only made a quarter crop (for 2019),” he said. “No one’s near a half or a full crop yet. It’s just been cold. There’s no panic, but we need it to start warming up.

“Picture that tree as a big solid ice cube, it’s going to take a while to thaw out,” he added. “We’ll need multiple days above freezing to thaw it out.

“We’re completely at the mercy of the weather; I would argue, more than any other agricultural product.”

OMPA relies on the National Agricultural Statistics Survey as a means to gauge syrup production across the state. While the survey allows insight into broad production and yield trends, actual totals on sap harvest remain elusive due to the voluntary submission format of the survey which only sees a handful of producers respond.

Despite its lack of specificity, Evans cites a minor production drop-off the past three years, but not a decline in popularity.

“Sales of syrup have risen dramatically,” he said. “Syrup is very popular right now. It’s part health food driven, part driven by people wanting to buy a product that they know is not highly processed but bought right off of a farm.”

An insight more valuable

“The thing we need to focus on in Ohio and Lake County is retail and selling our syrup. To survive around here we need to rely on a retail market. We have to produce the product and sell it direct to the consumer and not rely on the bulk market.” — Roger Roseum of Chester Township

than sheer volume may be how Ohio markets its sticky sauce.

“We’re competing with a lot of maple operations up north in Vermont, New York, parts of New Hampshire,” Evans said. “They have hundreds of thousands of taps. That’s not really possible around here, so we have to focus on being smaller. We’re forced to focus on efficiency.

Among the smaller local operations are Roseum Farms in Chester Township. Roger Roseum, who runs the farm alongside Marcus Roseum, owns 365 maple trees.

He’s been able to boil 20 gallons of syrup since he started tapping for the season on Feb. 17. He said this year’s production is down compared to last year due to weather complications.

“It’s tough to compete with the very large operations, that’s the bottom line,” Roger Roseum said. “We’re going to have to do things differently. We can’t keep selling syrup the way we did 15 years ago and hope to stay profitable.

“The thing we need to focus on in Ohio and Lake County is retail and selling our syrup,” he said. “To survive around here we need to rely on a retail market. We have to produce the product and sell it direct to the consumer and not rely on the bulk market.”

SUBMITTED Maple trees throughout the region are tapped to collect sap which will later be rendered to maple syrup.

SUBMITTED Roseum Farm, located in Chester Township, is among the region’s small-market maple syrup producers.