Sawyers Maple Farm

For many New Englanders, spring time means maple syrup.  We have our own small operation in Maine’s 100 mile wilderness at Gorman Chairback Lodge and Cabins.  40 maple trees are tapped with recycled gallon milk containers hanging in wait of dripping sap.  Two of us spent an hour collecting raw sap from each tree, an additional five hours to boil down the sap into maple syrup and the end result was about three cups of delicious, although slightly cloudy, maple syrup.  Unfortunately that won’t be enough to satisfy the nearly 2,000 hungry guests that stay at Gorman Chairback throughout the year.  So in late March we took a trip to Jackman, ME to find some local organic maple syrup. 

Jackman is located about 50 miles northwest of Greenville in Somerset County.  Northwestern Maine’s geographic location helps it produce the most maple syrup in the state.  A few sources indicate that Somerset may even out produce every other county in the country, including those located in Vermont.  The forests are densely populated with maple trees, and the relatively cold climate allows for ideal temperatures.  For sap to really get running, you hope for overnight temperatures in the mid 20’s and a nice sunny day in the mid 40’s.  The longer these temperatures continue throughout the spring, the more maple syrup you can make. 

Our directions instructed us to head north eight miles past Jackman and hang a right.  There aren’t many roads that far north but I somehow still managed to miss the turn and almost end up in Canada.  Backtracking, I was able to find the road even though the street sign was missing.  When we arrived at Sawyer’s Organic Maple Farm, we had actually ended up in Moose River, ME.  While the business is based in Jackman, the majority of the maple magic happens in Moose River. 

The 27 year old Kurt Sawyer, and his father Deke, greeted us outside of their sugar shack.  Steam was billowing out of the shack that was still under construction.  They were actually in the process of their first boil of the season.  Kurt and Deke were very excited to show us their newly purchased evaporator, the Waterloo Volcano 2000.  The relatively young Kurt has been operating his maple farm for six years, and this will be the first season with his own evaporator.  A friend that helped him start up his operation had also been allowing Kurt to use his evaporator.  He will be able to increase production this year with his own evaporator.  In previously years he had trouble keeping up with the flowing sap from his 4,863 tapped maple trees on his 70 acre leased lot.  Each tree, which has to be 10 inches in diameter for one tap and 20 inches for two taps to meet organic regulations, will produce about 10-20 gallons of sap per season.  20 gallons of sap will eventually be boiled down into five pounds of syrup and fill a little under half of a gallon container. 

Kurt was happy to show us around his lot and answer any questions we had.  He grew up in southern New Hampshire and moved to Jackman with his family in 2003.  His father, Deke, is now a pastor at the Fellowship Alliance Chapel in Jackman.  Kurt’s mother, Helen and brother, Bret also help out with the operation.  Kurt discovered his passion for maple syrup while working at Moose River Sugar Camp.  After a few years, he decided to give it a try on his own.  Kurt’s mentor helped him lease a lot just across the street and allowed him to continue to use his evaporator. 

Kurt explained the process of making maple syrup as we weaved our way through the five miles of plastic vacuum pressurized pipe.  The entire pipe network has to be carefully installed to continually be running downhill towards his storage tanks.  Kurt determines the sugar content of the raw sap with a hydrometer.  This is important in determining how much water will need to be removed to result in a delicious grade A maple syrup.  Raw sap is generally around 2% sugar, and 40 gallon of sap with produce about one gallon of syrup.  However, this early in the season Kurt explained that the sugar content in sap can be as low as 1%.  This means he will need around 100 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup.  To speed up the process, the sap is first run through a reverse osmosis machine to remove almost 70% of its water content. 

http://maple.dnr.cornell.edu/produc/osmosis.htm 

  This sounds complicated, but essentially the sap is forced under pressure through a semi-permeable membrane that only water can pass through. With most of the water removed, the sap is then boiled down in the Waterloo Volcano 2000 evaporator. 

The evaporator was purchased used from Canada.  A lot of these oiled fired evaporators are up for sale because the Canadian government is offering subsidies for using wood or pellet fired evaporators.  This is both good and bad for smaller maple farms in the states, like Sawyer’s.  Kurt was able to buy his own evaporator at a good price, but these subsidies could make it even harder to compete with the Canadian syrup market.  The remaining water is boiled off in the evaporator until it reaches a sugar content of about 66%-68%.  During this process the syrup needs to be watched carefully.  Syrup has a tendency to get foamy and boil over when it nears its desired viscosity.  Kurt’s trick to prevent this is to add a drop of organic sunflower oil when it begins to foam.  It is also very easy to over boil the syrup and sugar crystals can form.  The maple syrup is filtered one last time to remove sugar sand that causes cloudiness and hand bottled by Kurt or one of his helpful family members. 

Kurt hopes to produce 1,800 gallons of syrup each spring with his current operation.  Although he already has plans to double the size of his operation in the next few years.  He travels to farmer’s markets in Skowhegan, is diligent about responding to any requests for syrup and even sells on ebay to places all over the world.  We are proud to serve Sawyer’s Organic Maple Syrup at AMC facilities.