Syrup season takes root

[Lee Borgersen]

              Syrup season takes root in Central Minnesota

Maple syruping season varies from year to year, yet it can be simple enough to try in your backyard

SANTIAGO — Box elders and oaks melted into the gray-and-white of early March as David Martin punched through knee-deep snow, pausing to point out a large box elder rising from the wind-polished icy crust.

It’s his indicator tree, the one he taps first, the one that tells him when the sap is running and the maple syruping season is about to start. Martin watches the tree through a scope in his house near Santiago.

Once the sap starts running, usually in early April in his neck of the woods, it’s time to set 200 more spiles. In a little more than a decade, the Martins’ backyard operation has grown from five trees to about 150, spreading beyond their 5½ acres onto willing neighbors’ property.

David and Gretchen Martin’s venture into backyard maple syruping — one they’ll share again this season through a Becoming an Outdoors-Woman in Minnesota event — started with a 2001 demonstration at Lake Maria State Park.

“We watched this guy cooking over a barrel, an open barrel. I said, ‘I could do that,’ ” said David Martin, 77, a retired Anoka-Ramsey Community College reading skills and public speaking instructor.

Then they learned about the four species of maples commonly tapped: sugar, silver, red and box elder. “I said, ‘Gee, we’ve got those.’ ”

Box elder sap contains about 2 percent sugar. It takes 50-60 gallons to make 1 gallon of syrup. Sugar maples have the highest sugar content, about 4 percent. The cost of taking that sap to 66 percent sugar — syrup — boils down to the heating source. Some use wood. Some use propane.

Average cost: $40 per gallon of syrup.

But backyard maple syruping is more about getting into the woods with family and friends, say three experienced tappers who have helped others get started.

“On an economic scale, making syrup doesn’t make much sense,” said Russ Windahl, who sells maple syrup-making supplies at St. Cloud’s Nitro Brew & Hobby, and helps his family with their 40-acre operation near Deer River. “It’s our heritage. It’s something fun. It’s an excuse to get outside the first sign of spring, between ice fishing and summer fishing.”



When David Martin (left) headed back into the woods to collect more sap  he left Bill Dahl to stoke the evaporator.

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