Small-scale maple sugar producers go with flow
Climate-dependent craft threatened by increasing changes to the environment
Much of the Northeast — including swaths of the Catskills, upstate New York and western Massachusetts — is dotted with sap houses, also known as sugar houses or sugar shacks. These cabins are where sap fresh from maple trees is boiled until it reaches a certain viscosity and becomes maple syrup.
When the houses are boiling sap, they are hard to miss: white steam clouds the area, dark smoke billows from chimneys, and a warm, sweet smell fills the air. Sugar shacks are often managed by one or two people, with knowledge inherited from long-gone family members, on land where sap has been collected for generations.
The process is entirely dependent on climate. The sap only “runs” during specific temperature swings, when temperatures rise following a hard freeze,and the sap must be refrigerated or boiled into syrup within hours.
“There’s a whole gamble of when to tap,” said Shaun Sisson of Bittersweet Maple Farm in Berne. “As soon as you drill the hole, the clock starts ticking.
Warm weather is bad for us because the microbes and bacteria will start to heal the tree faster.”
Sisson grew up in Schoharie County boiling sap with his grandfather, father and seven brothers. His wife, Dawn, has lived at Bittersweet Maple Farm Berne since 1975. The couple bought the farm from her parents in 2002 and carry on the family tradition with their daughters, Lily and Jena. This year is their seventh boiling in their new sap house, which sits on the site of the old sap house.
“It has to get below freezing at night for the trees to draw up moisture from the ground and that moisture mixes with the stored sugar carbohydrates that the tree produced the previous year,” Dawn Sisson said. “And when it gets above freezing, it creates positive pressure that pushes the nice sweet sap out.”
Maple sugar producers are always watching the weather, and they say their process is increasingly affected by climate change.
“Anyone who doesn’t believe in climate change can come look at my calendars,” said Marty Giuliano of Marty’s Maple Products in West Shokan. He started making sugar with his grandfather and uncle, Bud Eckert. His family has lived in West Shokan since the mid-1800s, and he’s been boiling sap there for 45 years. He works alongside his brother, Mike.
“Sugar was hard to get then. That’s why these were called sugar houses, but really they are sap houses now,” Giuliano said.
Randy Grippin grew up at Mountain Winds Farm in Berne and started boiling sap at his sap house in 2008. With his wife, he manages 1,850 taps on 140 acres, a commercial kitchen and a store that’s always open for neighbors to stop by and help themselves. His grown children help when they can, but they have jobs, school and other interests that keep them busy.
“Last year, Albany County probably had the worst weather for maple that I can remember,” Grippin said. “The other local maple producers I have contact with had the worst year they’ve ever had. Ours wasn’t great. The weather has got just as much impact on us as it does for other farmers.”
Amid the small-scale sugarmakers across the region, the Hudson Valley is also home to the largest maple syrup production facility in North America — Crown Maple Syrup in Dover Plains. But Grippin extols the benefits of buying directly from local producers.
“The bigger places buy syrup that was bought from a packer who bought it from 100 guys like me. It’s real maple, but a lot of times it loses the nuances of the individual farm because all
those syrups have been blended together,” he said. “If you lived across the street from me and made syrup at the same time, yours would probably taste different than mine because of the organics of the soil the trees grow in.”
These buildings share many similarities and differences, developed over generations, in response to the land, technological advances and climate changes. The Grippins used to farm chickens. The Giulianos’ space previously housed miniature horses. Many newer sugar houses, like the Sissons’, were built specifically to hold modern equipment like reverse osmosis systems, refrigerated holding tanks and large evaporators.
“We don’t know. A number of years from now, we may not be making syrup in this area,” Giuliano said. “That would be a sad thing. It won’t be in my time, but it will probably be in my grandchildren’s. They don’t really help me anyway. They like the syrup, though.”
The New York State Maple Producers’ Association holds Maple Weekends on March 18-19 and 25-26. The public can visit sugar shacks and learn about maple sugarmaking processes and traditions.
For more information, go to: https://mapleweekend.nysmaple.com/.