GRAND RAPIDS, Mich — It’s as much a Michigan tradition as playing euchre or using your hand as a map. We make maple syrup here, and this time of the year is typically the sweet spot for making the sweet stuff.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, Michigan is fifth in maple syrup production in the country for 2023, producing an estimated 195,000 gallons. That is up 7,000 gallons from the previous year.
Now, I am far from a classically trained expert on this topic – but my family has been making maple syrup in this undisclosed, top-secret location at this time of the year, for over 30 years. And before us, this Sugar Shack we use has been the home base for maple syrup production for over 100 years.
When the days start getting warmer, but the nights are still below freezing – usually around February and March - that daily temperature change causes gasses inside the tree to contrast and expand. This change creates a pressure change that sucks up water and nutrients from the roots to the branches at night and then pushes that liquid out during the day.
When the tree is ‘tapped’ with a small hole, we collect some of the liquid, called sap as it moves.
After the sap is collected, it’s boiled down because it is mostly water. And after a long, long time the end result is the sugary, syrupy, pancake topper you know and love. A very simple but very, very long process.
Sarah Bass and the sap masters at the Blandford Nature Center in Grand Rapids make maple syrup every year, too.
“The syrup typically boils at seven degrees above the water boiling temperature, so typically 219 degrees," said Sarah. "And so we're watching that SAP as it's getting darker in color as it's getting more caramelly, more mapley, more golden. We are basically boiling that sap and it's a level pan and so the staff is moving through that pan through these channels towards the hottest part of the pan as it's getting more dense. And when we're when the sap is in the finishing pan, which is the hottest part of the pan, you can see it boiling a lot more.”
This year, and last has been odd for both my family and over here at Blandford, with the warmer winters shifting when the sap starts flowing.
"The big change is mostly coming in terms of timing," Sarah told us. "And so last year, when we had really warm weather early in the season, we were afraid that we were going to be missing the whole season because of how early those trees were producing sap and how much sap they were getting so early."
And so attention to the weather patterns becomes key.
"And you don't want that to just sit out if they're going to be multiple 50-degree days in a row," She explains. "...You want to make sure that you are tapping trees in a timely way. According to your goals and your system, how much time you're willing to manage as well."
Sarah and the team are also taking some pretty innovative approaches to their process, tapping certain trees on a set rotation and using a tubing system to relieve some stress on the 150-ish trees they tap. My family does things on a little smaller scale – focusing more on just spending time in the woods than producing vast quantities of syrup.
But no matter how you do it, making maple syrup is a labor of love.
"I would say that knowing how much labor goes into it— how much work goes into tapping, collecting, putting it into a barrel putting it into the tank cooking it bottling it—" Sarah emphasized. "So much goes into it that especially when you're part of the process in some way, it makes it so much more delicious because you know that so much care and love and hard work went into it,"
The results are so worth the work.
"And it's just so delicious. If you visit our maple sugar house and step inside and smell that maple sap cooking, it will make you want pancakes immediately."
Blandford holds their annual Sugarbush Festival on March 23 this year.
From 10-3 p.m., enjoy live music and performances by the Blandford School 6th graders— plus wildlife encounters, games, and crafts to entertain nature lovers of all ages!
You can learn all about the sugaring process and indulge in a literal taste of what they do here with some maple cotton candy or a taste test of their final product.
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