This maple season pines for more night freezes as syrup fests start up
This once-a-month winter of ours, with excessive thawing that drives skiers nuts, had seemed to offer a glimmer of golden hope for maple syrup. After all, maple trees need daily freeze-thaw cycles to pump their sap.
But taps in the sugar bushes aren’t gushing. At least, not all the time.
Throughout March, the hungry will line up for pancakes and pure maple syrup, especially as Bendix Woods County Park in New Carlisle marks 50 years of its Sugar Camp Days on March 18-19.
Maple grower Michael Ramer in New Paris, Ind., says his season is “not too bad,” though he’s not raving about the conditions. It just didn’t freeze at night often enough, he explains, noting how freezing pulls the sap up in the tree and thawing releases it down.
“If you get a good freeze, it’ll probably run for two days, then taper off,” the owner of Front Porch Sugarhouse says.
“Last year, we tapped, and they ran for four weeks,” he adds, which surprises me because last winter was also a good snowy winter for skiing. “This year, we tapped and it ran a little bit.”
But, in Argos, grower Ethan Zimmerman says he’s had an “excellent” season, thanks to a vacuum system that he’s rigged up to taps and tubing in his 20-acre woods. The vacuum, he says, helps to equalize pressure in the tree and coax out sap.
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Ramer and Zimmerman both will open up their sugar bushes for free visits and pancakes in this weekend's Indiana Maple Syrup Weekend.
Larger growers tend to invest in the expense of a vacuum system.
But George DeWald, the parks superintendent who also runs the sugar bush at Maple Wood Nature Center
in LaGrange, says he put about $300 into a vacuum that he’d crafted this season from the water pump for an RV. He’d found the directions online.
He hooked it up to just 50 taps, compared with Maple Wood’s 475 traditional buckets under taps.
DeWald says that, during a good run, the vacuum has delivered 30% more sap through the tubes than the traditional drip buckets. But, in a bad run, the vacuum delivered 100% more or better than the buckets.
“We haven’t had lots and lots of runs, but the ones we’ve had were monstrous,” he says.
DeWald says he experimented with the vacuum to show yet another method of modern sugar making. Parks like these focus primarily on education, not profit.
Bendix Woods, which misses the sugar-bush wisdom and influence of botanist/retired Indiana University South Bend professor Vic Riemenschneider, who died in January, hasn’t added a vacuum, feeling that it isn’t the right fit, naturalist Amal Farrough says. It does have a reverse osmosis system that helps to extract water, reducing the amount of boiling that staff and volunteers do in the sugar house.
Bendix Woods has set its tapping day on the third Saturday of February in recent years, scheduled in advance so it can involve the public and educate them. It contrasts with growers who watch the weather for the optimal stretches of freeze-thaw. A total of 101 people came to help on Feb. 18. The park would have produced more syrup if it had started tapping earlier — even if that remains a secondary goal. It's yielding an average amount of syrup so far this season.
With climate change, Farrough says, park staff have started to wonder if they should move tapping day a week earlier.
“It’s an open question,” she says. “We’re not sure.”
Conditions and weather still vary wildly from one season to the next.
This year, DeWald is now concerned that the season could finish in the next two weeks if, as he suspects, the buds on maple trees break open. That would turn the sap bitter.
“I could be wrong,” he says, noting that some growers in central Indiana have already pulled their taps.
Farrough says she’s seen buds swell on silver maples, though not so for the trees that the park actually taps: the sugar maples and black maples.
In Argos, Zimmerman is grateful that the winter didn’t see temperature spikes that hit 70 degrees, which, he says, could have spurred growth in trees, causing them to narrow or close tap holes.
However the season finishes — and whatever our wacky weather does — we should be grateful that native maple trees are still feeding us. Pure maple syrup offers trace amounts of nutrients that cane sugar doesn't. It boasts a lower glycemic index than regular sugar, though guidance on diabetes still warns that it's sugar that needs to be properly balanced.
What's truly healthy, Farrough says, is that growing maples don't involve the excess of chemicals that cane sugar farming does. Rather, a maple forest forms a native ecosystem that supports other life. An old nature guidebook by Donald W. Stokes points out that wildlife uses almost every part of this tree for food. Beavers chew the bark. Rabbits and deer eat the twigs and winter buds. Birds such as grosbeaks, purple finches and nuthatches dine on the buds and flowers. Squirrels and chipmunks nibble on the seeds.
Now that's sweet.
Maple Madness
Locally made maple syrup will be sold at each of these fests.
∎ Indiana Maple Syrup Weekend: A few map producers in our area and others across Indiana open their farms and woods for free tours, pancakes, syrup and other activities. Front Porch Sugarhouse, 69515 County Road 21, New Paris, opens from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 11 with added barrel rides for kids. Zimmerman Sugar Bush, 6401 E. 18th Road, Argos, opens from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 11. For other participating farms and their hours, visit indianamapleweekend.com.
∎ Indiana Dunes National Park: Chellberg Farm, 618 N. Mineral Springs Road, between U.S. 20 and U.S. 12 in Porter. 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Central March 11-12. Free to attend. The park’s entrance fees are waived for the weekend. Rangers and volunteers will show sugar making methods of Native Americans and early settlers and boil sap in the sugar house as the Chellberg family did in the 1930s. Kids can meet farm animals. Food trucks will serve maple-glazed pork belly sandwiches and maple-flavored gelato atop waffles. (www.nps.gov/indu, 219-395-1882)
∎ Sugar Camp Days at Bendix Woods County Park: On Timothy Road south of Indiana 2 and eight miles west of the U.S. 31 bypass, New Carlisle. 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. March 18-19. Lions Club pancake and sausage breakfast from 8 a.m. to noon both days; $9 per person, $5 for ages 6-12, free for ages 5 and younger. Admission is $8 per vehicle. With demonstrations of modern and traditional ways of making syrup, walking tours of the sugar bush, chance to meet a forester, cooking demonstrations with maple syrup (10 a.m. to noon), horse-drawn wagon rides, blacksmith demonstrations, ice carvings, historical crafters and sales of foods made with maple syrup, including kettle corn, cotton candy, hot dogs and baked goods. (sjcparks.org, 574-654-3155)
∎ Maple Wood Nature Center: 4550 E. County Road 100 South, LaGrange, Ind. 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. March 18-19. Lions Club pancake breakfast from 7 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.; cost is $9 per person and $4 for ages 4-10. Free tours of sugar shack, horse-drawn wagon rides and Roz Puppets shows all day. Free admission and parking. (lagrangecountyparks.org, 260-854-2225)
∎ Maple Row Sugarhouse: 12646 Born St., Jones. 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sundays March 18-19 and March 25-26. With sugarhouse tours, pancake and sausage breakfast, maple lunch, petting farm, living history re-enactment, French colonial sugar camp, Civil War camp (March 18-19), lumberjack camp (March 25-26) and kids activities. There also will be contests, demonstrations, wagon rides and other entertainment scheduled. Free admission. (michiganmaplefestival.com, 269-350-3553)
Final skiing weekend
Swiss Valley Ski & Snowboard Area in Jones plans to pack in its season finale March 11-12 with a “terrain park jam,” costume contest, family NASTAR races, and outdoor beer garden and food.
And it looks like Timber Ridge and Bittersweet ski resorts near Kalamazoo may also pull off another weekend.
Watch the resorts’ websites and social media for details.
Find columnist Joseph Dits on Facebook at SBTOutdoorAdventures or 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Maple syrup fests at Bendix Woods parks in warm climate for production
