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Even at 94, Clyde Franin still remembers the routine like yesterday – come home from school, hike through the woods to the sugarbush and check the taps. He knew it didn’t matter if it was cold, snowing or if he simply didn’t feel like doing it. When it was maple season, Franin knew it was time to work.

Sophisticated off-road trucks and tapping equipment didn’t exist when he started his routine in the early 1940s. To harvest the sap, he trudged on foot through several feet of snow while carrying a gallon of sap to load on his horse-drawn sleigh.

“It takes about 40 gallons of sap to get one gallon of maple syrup. And we weren’t working with the fancy tech stuff they have now. It was me and those gallon pails praying I didn’t spill climbing over snow banks taller than I was,” Franin said. “I never thought it wasn’t worth it though. Maple season is still my favorite time of year.”

New York State is the second-largest maple syrup producer in the United States, producing roughly 750,000 gallons of syrup per year. Syrup producers, like Franin, tap trees to extract sap that is boiled down into maple syrup through a labor-intensive evaporation process that only occurs in late winter. The sap is highly perishable and only runs under specific weather conditions — freezing nights and milder days.

In 1995, the New York State Maple Producers Association (NYSMPA) introduced Maple Sunday as an opportunity for local syrup producers to engage with their communities. Today, that celebration, Maple Weekend, spans two weekends during March and highlights sugarhouses across the state with cultural roots as deep as their maple trees.

When Matthew Critz purchased what would become Critz Farms in 1985, it was a run-down dairy farm in Cazenovia, New York. Its trees hadn’t been tapped since World War II.

Matthew said that when cane sugar rations were enforced during the war, it led to a rise in alternative sugars, like maple. For struggling wartime dairy farmers, the maple season from February to April offered an avenue for quick cash during their offseason.

“We cut down some old trees a few years ago to make room for new growth and actually saw where taps had gone in years ago during the war,” Matthew said. “Local syrup has always helped people. That’s why we do this.”

Lars Jendruschewitz | Assistant Photo Editor

Swiss Mountain Farms in Erieville opens its doors for visitors during Maple Weekend to explore their new boiling space. The farm is only a few miles from where Joanna Baker’s family boiled their own sap in the early 1900s.

Today, Critz Farms averages over 600 gallons of syrup per year. The business has always centered on family, whether that be the tireless work of his wife, “the glue,” Juanita, or his son Patrick, who’s assisted with syrup production since he was a child and continues to today with his own family.

Surrounded by the buttery smell of syrup oozing from the smokestack of the sugarhouse as a child, Patrick can’t remember a time when maple syrup wasn’t a centerpiece in his life. He recalled pleading with his father to be able to lend a hand any chance he had.

Even now, Patrick can’t help but smile when he thinks about his first season in the sugarhouse. The pride he felt serving his community made him fall in love with sugaring. Today, he plans to carry on the family tradition and take over the farm one day.

“I think I was 10 or 11 and I put on a suit to sell syrup to customers in the café. Seriously, I had a tie on and everything,” he said. “I just was so proud to be a part of it.”

But, maple sugaring isn’t the same as it was in 1999 when Critz Farm sold its first boil, Patrick said. The maple syrup season has always been at the mercy of “Mother Nature” and as weather patterns become more unpredictable, he said managing a successful sugarhouse is far more difficult.

When temperatures warm up earlier it makes the sap run earlier, he said. Warm temperatures trigger a response in the tree, signalling it’s time for the buds to break and release their leaves. As soon as that signal is sent, the sap changes and no longer has the appropriate sugar composition to be made into maple syrup.

Because of that, sugarhouses are forced to start maple production earlier than normal to ensure they catch sap while it’s usable. If they’re not ready to boil when the sap runs, sugarhouses like Critz Farms run the risk of not harvesting enough and losing an entire season of profits.

“It’s scary. It’s easy for people to ignore this stuff and act like our climate isn’t changing or impacting them but I see (the) impacts every day,” Patrick Critz said.

Lars Jendruschewitz | Assistant Photo Editor

Swiss Mountain Farms sells its homemade syrup to customers all year long. Joanna Baker and her husband began sugaring out of their garage in 2013 and they now have a brand new space they work out of with a new evaporator and reverse osmosis machine.

Critz Farms isn’t a regional anomaly. Jill Rahn, a forest resource analyst in the Department of Forest Properties at SUNY ESF and the leader of maple syrup operations at the Heiberg Memorial Forest campus, has experienced unpredictability with the sap run in the ESF sugarbush — especially the past two seasons. The first day Rahn boiled in 2024 was on Jan. 27, the second-earliest boil ESF ever recorded, according to data she calculated dating back to 2009.

“Once your sap hits 45 degrees you pretty much need to use it immediately. The yeast in the sap just starts digesting the sugars,” Rahn said. “Even if you get it cold again after that it doesn’t matter. It’s like when you leave milk out. Once it goes bad, it’s bad.”

Yet, Rahn said she doesn’t catch herself feeling anxious when looking ahead to the future of maple syrup operations. New York winters aren’t what they were even a few years ago, she said, when she was in the field working on her master’s degree. But, she also knows that through her work during Maple Weekend and the entire season, she raises awareness and protects a tradition embedded in the fabric of New York life for future generations.

“I really like giving the tours to people who have just never experienced this before. They get the light bulb moment of clicking like, ‘Oh my gosh that’s why maple syrup is $52 a gallon,’” Rahn said. “Having them leave knowing more than they did and having more appreciation … that’s why I love this.”

When she and her husband started sugaring from their garage in 2013, the next generation was at the forefront of Joanna Baker’s mind — specifically, her three children.

“We’ve always tried to get our kids involved in things that help them learn and appreciate what they have,” Baker said. “They really enjoyed (maple sugaring) and like so many people who’ve been doing this for generations, it’s become a family affair for us.”

Baker’s family outgrew their garage evaporation operation and now works out of a brand-new space on their property in Erieville. It’s complete with an evaporator and reverse osmosis machine serving as a home base for their business, Swiss Mountain Farms.

On a windowsill, Baker displays a glass jar filled with antique maple sap taps. Upon first glance, they’re easy to miss altogether, dissipating into the backdrop of the café alongside homemade maple pastries, candies, butter and more.

But, Baker doesn’t mind that. She’s held onto them to serve as a reminder for herself — where she comes from and where she’s going — and to show her children the power of tradition.

“These are the taps my family used to make syrup all the way back to the early 1900s. They lived less than a mile down the road,” Baker said. “Sugaring is hard work and I have a full-time job, but I want to build something to support my kids like my family did for me.”

Published on March 28, 2024 at 1:23 am