As the weather warms and spring begins this weekend, maple syrup season is in full swing in Michigan. In Midland, the Chippewa Nature Center is hosting programs about the process of making natural syrup while some locals are tapping their own trees.
For Midlander Gary Skory, making maple syrup is one of the few constants he has been able to hold onto during the pandemic. He credits CNC with introducing him to natural maple syrup the day after he started working there as a historical interpreter in March 1982. After getting a quick tour of the sugar bush – the area where trees are tapped – and a crash course of how to produce maple syrup, he was completely hooked.
“It’s social, educational and environment-friendly,” Skory said.
Making syrup represents the importance of friendships for Skory. His mentor and friend Virginia Stroemel, who first employed Skory at the Manistee County Museum when he was 12, left him five acres of maple trees just a mile north of Bear Lake, Michigan, when she died. In 2006, Skory and his grandnephew, Bryce Cameron, began tapping trees and that same year his nephew, Mark Cameron, brought up the idea of building a rustic sugarhouse. A couple years later another friend, Herm Gieseler, gave Skory an evaporator pan, which has proved to be invaluable.
“That pan makes the best syrup ever. The fire’s not enclosed, so all the smoke hovers around the syrup and it gets a nice flavor,” Skory said.
Skory has anywhere between 65 to 100 taps and typically makes 15-20 gallons of syrup in a season. He welcomes family and friends from Manistee, Midland and Chicago to come help harvest sap and have a good time together. There are, however, days when Skory prefers to wander around the woods by himself. For him, the best part is tapping the trees and watching the sap flow even before he inserts the spile. He describes the sound of the sap as it drips into buckets as a “natural world symphony.” The finest feeling for him is to see a batch made and all of his hard work come to fruition.
“Every time we have a batch produced, we look at it and think what a wonderful thing we’ve made,” Skory said.
The process of collecting sap and making syrup is completely dependent on the weather. Sap is harvested when the temperature drops below freezing during the night and rises above freezing during the day. Maple syrup season can last between two to six weeks, though this year looks like it’s going to be a good harvest for both Skory and CNC.
“Ultimately, it’s nature that controls the process,” Skory said. “Making maple syrup teaches me that we’re not in control, but nature has ultimate control.”
“We started collecting at the end of February…We never really know how long the season is going to last because once the buds start to open, the season’s over,” said CNC Director of Programs Jenn Kirts.
Midlanders can get in on the fun at CNC. Every Saturday and Sunday in March CNC hosts “Afternoons at the Sugarhouse” where staff members demonstrate how to identify and tap trees and the process of making syrup.
About a dozen volunteers gathered at CNC on Sunday afternoon to help with sap collecting. After a quick tutorial by Kirtz about how to collect sap, the group headed into the sugar bush, armed with five-gallon buckets. Caretaker Bruce Vaydik drove around and helped the volunteers empty their buckets into a holding tank.
“We couldn’t do without our volunteers,” Vaydik said. “They do a lot.”
One of the volunteers, Karen Skorup of Midland, heard about the maple syrup activities at CNC through her kids. She volunteered on Sunday with her two eldest, Reagan, age 6 and Grayson, age 8.
“My kids are somewhat familiar with it, but we haven’t done this before,” Skorup said.
Peggy Decker drove up from Morenci, Michigan, after her son, Alex Decker, who works at CNC, told her about the opportunity. Although she has friends who tap their own trees, this was the first time she had collected sap.
“It’s fun. I didn’t realize how easily the sap flowed,” Peggy stated.
Alex explained prospective tappers can identify maple trees by the three B’s: buds, branches and bark. The buds are dark brown while the bark is silvery grey, black and brown and shaggy. The easiest way to spot a maple is to see if the branches spread out almost parallel with the ground.
“Maple is the best one to get syrup out of because of its sugar content,” Alex said, adding that syrup can be made from walnut and birch trees.
Inside the CNC Sugarhouse the air was sweet and warm as sap boiled in the wood-burning evaporator. Kirts explained to visitors how the sap is deposited into a metal container and then distributed into the evaporator where it boils down to make syrup. CNC staff continue to watch over the process, checking the liquid’s consistency, color and temperature. Since maple sap is 98% water and 2% sugar, making syrup is a long process, taking three to four hours to create a gallon of syrup. In addition, it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup.
“Pure maple syrup is simply cooked tree sap. It doesn’t have any colors added, no flavors added,” Kirts said.
“There’s nothing else that compares. Honey comes close, but it’s not quite like maple syrup,” Skory said.
CNC will not be hosting its annual Maple Syrup Day due to the ongoing pandemic, but there are still ways to explore and learn first-hand about the process of making maple syrup. For more information, visit www.chippewanaturecenter.org/maple-syrup-day or call 989-631-0830.
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Let the good times flow - Midland Daily News
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