Maine Maple Sunday: It’s that sweet time of year again

FARMINGTON – Although the sap wasn’t running on Maine Maple Sunday this year because it was too cold, plenty of families turned out to sugar houses across Franklin County.

Maple syrup producers opened their sugar houses for tours, demonstrations on how it’s made, along with a taste of the sweet stuff.

A steady stream of visitors came to Maple Hill Farm on Titcomb Hill Road in Farmington to watch the Tracy family’s operation and receive a taste of maple syrup on ice cream, in cookies and donuts.

Pete Tracy kept a vigilant watch on the evaporator as steam bellowed up to the rafters and out the vents above. It’s the first batch the farm has produced so far this spring after only two days got warm enough for the sap to flow.

“We had one day last week and it ran yesterday,” Tracy said. Daytime temperatures need to reach 40 to 45 degrees for the highest sap sugar content to run and, ideally, temperatures dropping to below freezing at night. It takes about 35 to 40 gallons of sap boiled down to make one gallon of syrup.

New this year is the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s change in maple syrup grading standards to be in line with international standards. The idea is to give consumers a uniform understanding of what they are buying.

Five years ago the International Maple Syrup Institute, which represents maple producers in the U.S. and Canada, started the procedures for the new grade standards.

The old Grade B syrup designation for the darkest syrup has been discontinued. Instead, four Grade A standards will be used and are described as:  golden color and delicate taste, amber color and rich taste, dark color and robust taste, and very dark and strong taste.

The Tracys’ Maple Hill Farm has been opening its historic sugar house doors every year on the fourth Sunday in March after the Maine Maple Producers Association started the tradition in 1983. The current sugar house was built in the late 1880s after the first one burned down. The house was expanded in 2005 and a few years ago, added was a new vacuum pump system that pulls sap from the farm’s nearly 800 tapped trees through tubing to the evaporator.

Although it’s been a slow warm-up lately, producers will be kept busy this coming week as temperatures are expected to be in the mid-40s starting Tuesday-just perfect for that sweet sap to start flowing.

A list of maple syrup producers can be found here.