Des Moines Register
03-15-07
Tapping for syrup
Maple trees yield a rare, sweet delicacy that relies on patience and weather
By TOM PERRY
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
Scores of maple trees around Iowa this week have a bite in their bark.
Made by spigots (technically "spiles") tapped into trunks, these bites encourage the sap-letting that eventually gives way to locally produced maple sugar products in about four dozen wooded areas scattered across the state.
A rite of late winter/early spring in Iowa for more than 150 years, tapping maples yields about 1,000 gallons of syrup annually in Iowa.
"It's a pretty simple process,'' said Steve Pearson, a Madison County natural resource specialist who has been tapping maples in a park just south of
Winterset for 11 years.
Last Friday, about 10 trees were tapped on the Madison County conservation site.
On Monday, Pearson and county naturalist Emily Vant Hul checked the 2-gallon galvanized steel collection buckets that cling to trees like metallic pouches.
As if each maple had a mind of its own, every bucket held a different amount of the clear sap.
"They really just started running this weekend, so this is the first of it,'' Pearson said, easing the lid down over one of the buckets.
Tapping maple trees around the state also unofficially signals the beginning of the outdoor events season.
Over the next three weekends, maple sugar producers - two small and one large
- will hold demonstrations, some with pancake feeds.
- The Madison County Conservation Board sponsors an hour-long maple syruping demonstration at 10 a.m. Saturday south of Winterset at the Pammel
Park Lodge.

The demonstration coincides with the annual pancake feed sponsored by the local Kiwanis.
- The Indian Creek Nature Center in the Cedar Rapids area will run maple-syrup programs Saturday and again March 24.
- Farther north in Castalia, about 17 miles south of Decorah, two successive
Sundays, March 25 and April 1, will be dedicated to an annual Maple Festival that features an outdoor pancake and sausage breakfast at Green's Sugar Bush.
Green's is a family-owned maple sugar farm in operation since 1851.
Last year, on a splendid early spring day, about 950 people were fed at one of the breakfasts, said Sugar Bush's Karen Green.
"Then the second Sunday the weather was bad, but we still had about 275," she said.
It is fitting that weather would play such a crucial role in an event centered around maple sugaring. It can make or break a sap flow.
"It's all about the weather," said Jesse Randall, assistant professor and
Extension forestry agent at Iowa State University.
"I've seen seasons that have gone from three days to six or seven weeks.''
So, unlike many Iowans who hope this week's warmer temperatures will linger, maple sugar producers need another cold snap before the end of the month.
"It has to freeze and thaw," Green said of the weather.
"Freezing at night is a good thing. Then it's just a matter of how much it warms up again during the day."
"A lot also depends on how wet it was in the fall and winter," said Vant Hul, who will be working Saturday's Madison County maple syruping demonstration.
Warm days and cold nights combine to coax sap from maples for about three to four weeks in Iowa, typically beginning in the middle of March.
The farther north, the longer the season.
This year, weather differences in Iowa are especially pronounced, which directly affects the sap flow.
Up at Sugar Bush, much of the 2-foot snow cover on the ground Friday had melted by the end of the weekend.

Deep snow in the timber area at Sugar Bush is welcome because it helps keep temperatures colder at night.
Dale Green, whose family founded the Sugar Bush operation in the 1850s, said it has been years since he's seen snow as deep in the timber at this time of year.
Of course, even with the best weather conditions, maples are misers. They don't let their sap flow freely.
They surrender it fitfully in a plodding ritual of grudging obedience to the season's temperature swings.
"It just kind of drips out," Vant Hul said, peering into one bucket that had filled to more than half. Vant Hul had just looked into another that was nearly empty.
Less than 7 percent of Iowa's land is forested, and the majority of the trees are oak, not maple.
The 1,000 gallons produced here is a drop in the bucket of the approximately
1.45 million gallons produced nationwide in 2006, according to the Agriculture
Marketing Resource Center.
In a ranking of states, "we don't even make the cut, we're so little," said Joseph
Prusacki, head of the U.S. Agricultural Statistical Service in Iowa.
There were 56 maple sugar-making operations, most of them small operations, in
2002, according to the service's most recent statistics.
Out of the estimated 7.26 million taps in the United States, approximately 5,300 were in Iowa, Prusacki said.
Karen Green at Sugar Bush said Monday that the first weekend's sap flow was
"pretty good," but it would take about a week to determine whether 2007 was going to be a strong year for syrup production in Iowa.
If it is like other years, about 40,000 gallons of maple sap will drip and drool from maple tree trunks around Iowa.
"We'll cook for three or four days," said Pearson, explaining that sap in Madison
County is cooked in the open air for hours, until the process boils off the sap's water.
At Sugar Bush, an operation with more than 36 acres of timber, so much sap is collected that water is boiled off in massive wood-fired evaporators, which can boil down 250 gallons of sap in an hour, Dale Green said.

Iowa-produced pure maple syrup has become true luxury food, almost like rare wine.
Most of the 50 or so operations tapping maple trees in the state are hobbyists or educators.
Dale Green said Tuesday that even though the first few days of sap flow look promising, "you never know how it's going to go until it's over."
"Last year all the syrup was lighter than normal in color," he said. "That varies from year to year, and there's nothing you can do about it."
Not your everyday syrup
Pure maple syrup is a stranger to some palates.
Years of using mass-produced maple syrup products readily available in grocery stores has fooled taste buds, said Jesse Randall, resident maple syrup expert at
Iowa State University’s Extension Service.
“It does taste a little different” from most store-bought maple syrup products, he said.
Randall is new to his job at ISU, but he spent his youth on his family’s 150-yearold maple sugar farm in upstate New York.
Some maple syrup products are actually made with corn syrup, which may be a bit more mellow but is also far from authentic.
Highquality pure maple syrup is going to taste better, “hands down,” Randall said.
Recalling tours of his family’s farm, he said, “To be honest, when we put a lot of people through our sugar house and they never had maple syrup, it takes them a little while to get used to it. They’re so indoctrinated to the other stuff.”
Randall said some people say pure maple syrup is “too sweet.”
Even if it seems too sweet for pancakes, waffles and French toast, it is the best choice when a recipe calls for maple syrup as an ingredient.
Recipes most likely to include maple syrup as a flavoring and sweetener are applesauce, baked beans, baked apples and baked squash.

Maple syrup can also be used with butter to make a glaze for sweet potatoes or carrots.
Maple syrup in the U.S.
The maple syrup industry is strictly a North American institution, with the majority of syrup produced in Canada.
U.S. production of maple syrup in 2006 was 1.45 million gallons, up 17 percent from 2005.
Vermont led the nation with 33 percent of the U.S. production, followed by Maine
(21 percent), New York (17 percent), Wisconsin (7 percent), Ohio (5 percent),
Michigan (5 percent), New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and
Connecticut.
Large increases in yield and an increase in taps in many states have led to increased production.
The current number of taps in the United States is estimated at 7.26 million.
Source: Agriculture Marketing Resource Center
Reporter Tom Perry can be reached at (515) 284-8224 or tperry@dmreg.com