By Lee Homyock, Farmpark Administrator

Living in Ohio can be sweet—with maple syrup! North America is the only place in the world that maple syrup is produced. In the United States, there are 12 maple-producing states—luckily Ohio is one of them. Year after year, Ohio is ranked fourth or fifth in maple production in the United States. Ohio’s maple producers annually provide approximately 100,000 gallons of syrup, of which Farmpark averages between 350 and 400 gallons. The maple industry contributes $5 million to the state economy each year. 

Similar to fine wines, pure maple syrup gets its flavor from its geographic region. Maple syrup produced in northern Ohio has a different flavor than syrup produced in southern Ohio. Regardless of where in Ohio it comes from, the buckeye state’s syrups offer a wonderful flavor that is some of the finest in the world! 

Farmpark produces 350 to 400 gallons of maple syrup annually.

Maple production is one of the few agricultural activities not brought to the Americas by European settlers. Native Americans are widely recognized as the first to discover the sweet stuff from the maple tree. Various legends exist to explain the initial discovery. One is that the chief of a tribe threw a tomahawk at a tree, sap ran out and his wife boiled venison in the liquid. Another version holds that Native Americans stumbled on sap running from a broken maple branch. The Iroquois attribute the discovery to a particular squaw who used the sap for boiling food and found that the liquid became sweeter when boiled. However, it was discovered that northeastern Native American tribes used maple syrup to enhance and improve the taste of their dishes. The first written documentation of maple sugaring in North America was reported in 1557 by French explorer André Thévet. 

Sap collection circa 1900

Initially, making maple sugar had nothing to do with the maple flavor. The goal of the Native Americans and colonists was to obtain a sweetener (a rarity before 1800) that was cheaper and easier to obtain than cane sugar or molasses. From the seventeenth century onward, sap has been obtained in a brief window between winter and spring as the sap runs out to the maple trees when the temperature is around 40 degrees following a night when the temperature drops below freezing. 

The first methods of sugaring were quite primitive. Initially, tapping followed the native method of gashing trees. Gradually, the process evolved into cutting holes with an axe, chisel or auger (twist drill). By 1800, the more destructive methods of tapping were refined as farmers found that half inch holes still produced an adequate sap flow. 

Colonists carved spouts from sumac, elder, pine or maple. Hollowed out wooden troughs of poplar or maple were set at the base of the trees to catch the sap. Boiling was done over an open fire in large kettles and as the sap boiled down it was transferred to smaller kettles to make into sugar. 

Farmpark visitors can see both the bucket system and tubing system in use.

As farmers were drawn into the national and international markets in the early 1800s, technological changes, consumer tastes and new markets affected the traditional maple sugaring methods. Improvements in transportation and the processing of sugar cane helped cane sugar become more available and affordable. In the 1840s, the price of sugar dropped dramatically and the consumption of sugar began to rise, reaching 50 pounds per capita by the mid 1870s. 

Farmers seeking to keep maple sugar competitive began to improve the product and the efficiency of the process. Over the first half of the nineteenth century, farmers switched to using wooden and tin buckets, metal spouts and boiling sap in sheet metal pans on a brick arch enclosed in a “sugar” or “sap house.” These improvements resulted in higher quality maple products that compared favorably to cane sugar and molasses. 

Farmpark's tubing system

Over the 20th century, additional improvements have been made to continually improve the quality of the product and efficiency of the process. These days, sugar makers (including Farmpark), have forgone labor-intensive buckets in favor of tubing systems. The holes bored in sugar maples are now usually made with cordless drills. Sugar makers insert small plastic spouts into the holes and connect the spouts to huge webs of plastic tubing that route the precious sap into large tanks. Many of these sugar bushes even have vacuum systems that suck the sap out of the trees to increase yield, along with oil-fueled furnaces and reverse osmosis filters that remove some water prior to boiling. Visitors to the Farmpark can see both the bucket system and tubing system in use. The technology has changed dramatically, but in essence the process is virtually the same. Collect sap, reduce over heat, and enjoy.

Today, the productivity of a maple sugar producer is many times greater than that of the first settlers. Despite that, maple products seem expensive because the prices of other types of sugar have continued to decline. Ironically, maple syrup today is no more expensive than an equivalent amount of maple sugar in 1800. However, even though maple products seem so expensive, we are willing to pay extra for that unique maple flavor.