The best part of this muddy time between winter and spring - maple season! We headed into Washington County this month to chat with David Campbell and Mary Jeanne Packer of Mapleland Farms about their amazing maple syrup, as well as their process - from sap to syrup!
On Running A Family Business
My relatives came here from Scotland in the 1850’s and my brother Terry and myself are still living on and working on the same land that they came to back then. They were dairy farmers then.
The sugaring business came about 50 years ago. My parents and grandparents tapped some trees here and there and made a little syrup for the family, and we took to the process after that, starting at age 13. Our first customers were the school bus driver, the school custodian, even the other kids at school!
David Campbell and Mary Jeanne Packer at Mapleland Farms
On the Process: From Sap to Syrup
The process, in some ways, hasn’t changed in 200 years. That is, that you collect sap, you boil it down until there’s nothing left but the sweetness, and you call it maple syrup.
The legend is that a busy wife and mother needed to put on a pot of water to boil for tea, but instead of going down to the brook for water, she noticed “water” running from the trees and used that instead. Her husband came home for lunch and said it was the best tea he’d ever had! So that’s how, supposedly, maple syrup was discovered.
We’ve modernized some parts of the process since the early settlers learned about this sweet water from the trees. Starting at the tree, instead of just sticking a pot under the tree and hoping some sap falls into it, we have a certain way we drill holes with spouts that are the most efficient at grabbing the sap as it comes up. And we do get it on the way up! The sap comes from the ground to feed the leaves that are getting ready to open up. We then use sap lines, or tubing, to collect and direct the sap. We have almost 20,000 taps and over 60 miles of tubing over 600 acres that we’re tapping on. There’s a network of tubes that lead down to the bottom of the hill where the sap flows into tanks, which are then hauled to the sugar house. The sap is pumped into the back room at the sugar house, where we have reverse osmosis machines that take the sugar out, throw away the water, and save that sugar concentrate, which reduces the amount of time it has to boil.
The concentrate is then boiled for a period of time and drawn off through a tube at the end when it’s just short of the boiling point. At that time, it’ll be syrup at 67% sugar. It’s then pumped through a filter, which catches any impurities, and then we store it in barrels until it’s ready to be packaged.
It takes 50 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup. This is because the sap is just 1 or 2 percent sugar. Right now it’s 2% - earlier in the season it would be 1%, and at the end of the season it will drop back down to 1%. When it’s 1%, it takes about 70 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup.
The Offerings
Our maple candies are a favorite, for sure. We’ve won numerous awards for making them - international awards and even Vermont awards! It’s a method that I’ve perfected myself using a bit of a different process than most folks do.
We have the quintessential maple syrup, of course. Maple cream, maple fudge, maple cotton candy. We also have two flavors of maple granola, maple almonds, and maple roasted nuts. Our spicy maple rub and maple garlic pepper are very popular with folks on the craft fair circuit. The list goes on!
On Sales + Distribution
Our largest customer is in New York City - it’s called Fresh Direct - and we ship by the pallet to them every week. They do home food delivery. They represent about 15-20% of all of our sales. We sell to a few distributors that then sell to restaurants, and we also sell direct to local restaurants by the gallon. All the good breakfast spots!
Locally, you can also purchase at Price Chopper, Shop Rite, Healthy Living, and Fresh Market. Also apple orchards! Places like Hicks and Saratoga Apple are open year round and carry our products. Taste NY carries our products at rest areas across the state. We also sell direct to consumer on our website.
On Farm Life
The most rewarding thing about the business is having people satisfied with a quality product. I’ve done a bunch of workshops on how to make maple candies since I’ve won a lot of awards with them, and so I’m trying to teach other people how to make good maple candies instead of poor quality, which has been very rewarding.
The most challenging thing is probably the weather. With the weather changing, you don’t get as many freezing and thawing cycles, so we rely on the vacuum pumps to get the sap out of the trees more than we used to years ago.
Weather has made the timing of our season unpredictable too. The season starts earlier and earlier. It used to be the middle of March before the season actually started. The last couple of years, we started putting in the taps on the Monday after Christmas, and this year we got a good sap flow on January 1 and 2 and we made syrup on January 2.
Invasive species have been a problem because of the weather, too - bugs, like the asian longhorn beetle, and plants, like honeysuckle and buckthorn, are trying to take over the woods. The change in climate has made it so these plants and bugs that didn’t used to be able to survive here, are able to thrive here, which impedes on our trees.
The sugar maples don’t like the warmth of the south, and as the warm weather shifts north, the maple producers are probably going to need to shift north as well.
The view at Mapleland Farms
On Bird Friendly Maple
We’ve just been officially recognized as a bird friendly maple syrup producer! This is a project of Audubon New York, and we’re one of the first few to be recognized. We commit to manage our forests in a way that helps birds raise the next generation of their species. That includes leaving dead trees standing to provide nesting sites, and leaving downed trees on the forest floor to provide cover and forage. It’s an honor to have passed the certification and we hope to spark interest with customers who understand the value of a healthy habitat for birds and other wildlife.
On Maple Weekend
Maple Weekends will be the next two weekends - the 19th and 20th and the 26th and 27th of March from 9am - 4pm. While we won’t be having breakfast this year, we will be having a maple snack bar, which will feature maple doughnuts, maple cookies, and brownies and other products all made with maple syrup. Of course, we’ll also offer our tours!
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Mapleland Farms
525 Bunker Hill Road • Salem, NY
Website
Special thanks to Taste NY for making this series possible!
Taste NY at the Adirondacks Welcome Center offers nine state-of-the-art vending machines featuring food, beverages, and gifts from the Adirondack Region and across New York State. Find locally roasted coffee, cold beverages, chips, nuts, snacks, baked goods, milk, yogurt, cheese, ice cream, maple, honey, chocolate, candy, and artisan gifts.
Taste NY at the Adirondacks Welcome Center is operated by the Lake George Regional Chamber of Commerce.
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