By Leigh McCarren
Ownership and Outreach Specialist

Winter is a quiet time of year for most of our local farmers, but maple syrup farmers are busy getting ready for the sap to flow. Come early spring, maple syrup farmers work around the clock harvesting sap and turning it into the delicious syrups you find in our stores.

A Peek at the Maple Syrup Process

Maple season is early spring, when the weather is below freezing at night and above freezing during the day. This is typically a four to six week window in mid-March to early April in the Midwest. Sap flows when trees are waking up after a long winter and preparing to bud in the spring. One tree can be tapped in many different spots throughout its lifetime.

Some maple farmers collect sap with bags or buckets at each tree, while others set up a tubing system that funnels all sap into a centralized location with a vacuum.

Once raw sap is collected, it needs to be cooked down to be turned into syrup. On average, 40 gallons of raw sap makes about 1 gallon of maple syrup. To make this process more efficient, many maple farmers have large evaporators with big trays for boiling sap as fast as possible. The evaporator works to decrease the water content in the sap. Maple farmers test the density of the liquid to determine when their syrup is ready to bottle.

Tree sap is perishable and needs to be processed in a timely manner. During maple season, maple farmers often work around the clock until all sap has been boiled into syrup and transferred to a shelf-stable container.

The quality of the sap changes as the season progresses, and therefore,
the syrup changes. Early season syrup tends to be lighter in color and flavor, while late season syrup will be the darkest and richest.

Winter Citrus Salad with Maple Lavender Dressing

Maple syrup isn’t just for pancakes! Try this fresh recipe featuring delicious in-season citrus.
Recipe courtesy of B & E’s Trees.

Maple Lavender Dressing:
1 cup water
¼ cup maple syrup
¼ cup dried lavender (in bulk)
Bring water to a boil. Remove from heat. Stir in syrup and lavender. Steep for 15 minutes, strain & cool. Dressing can be stored in the refrigerator up to one month.

Citrus Salad:
4 cups assorted seasonal citrus, peeled & cut into bite-size pieces. Good options include pomelo, blood oranges, clementines, satsumas, kumquats (whole or quartered, peel on) and grapefruit.

Toss citrus salad with Maple Lavender dressing, ensuring all bites are well coated.

We’re proud to carry a variety of maple syrups from local farms in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Learn more about a few of the maple farmers behind the local syrups you find on our shelves.

Helms Sugar Shack
Mahlon Helms began tapping trees for a hobby. Mahlon says, ”The hobby just slowly got out of hand,” turning into a full-time business for the Helms family. He and his wife Amber established Helms Sugar Shack in 2009. Helms sources raw sap from sugar maple trees on several different properties in Wisconsin and makes their delicious syrup at a facility in Barron.

B & E’s Trees
B & E’s Trees was founded by Bree and Eric in 2011, when they purchased a swath of land full of sugar maple trees in the Driftless region of Wisconsin. Since then, they’ve built a relationship with Central Waters Brewing Company that inspired them to age their syrup in bourbon barrels. A team of five taps the trees on their farm by hand, collects sap, makes the syrup, then ages it in bourbon barrels for a year before it’s bottled and sent out to our stores.

Maple Valley Cooperative
Maple Valley Cooperative is a unique type of cooperative, owned by its farmers, employees, customers, vendors and investors, headquartered in Cashton, WI. Maple Valley partners with small maple farms across the Great Lakes and Appalachian regions of the U.S. to source their organic syrups. They are committed to respecting their farmers, customers, vendors, employees, communities and the environment, while producing the finest organic maple syrup.