sweet success story

by Susie Taylor

The maple syrup experience has a long history throughout the Buckeye State, but if you want to see where maple is king, go to Geauga County.

The sap starts running in late January and early February in southern Ohio and continues into March as you travel north, according to Les Ober, an Ohio State Extension specialist in Geauga County.

There’s no way to count the number of maple syrup producers in Ohio, Ober said. He estimates there could be as many as 800. And sugar maple trees are tapped from Urbana to Ashtabula and from Nelsonville to Williams County.

“But to get the real ‘maple experience,’ you need to drive around Geauga County in February and March,” Ober said. Nearly every sugar maple – and there certainly are many – will have a bucket to collect sap hanging from it, Ober said, “and that includes people who live in town.”

Plenty of fun
You can visit maple syrup festivals throughout Ohio, but the most prominent is Geauga County’s held in Chardon at the end of the season. Sap collected from trees in peoples’ yards in Chardon is used to boil down to syrup during the festival.

The festival features rides, plenty of pancakes an arts and crafts show and a maple syrup auction.

Just the Facts
In 2005, the value of maple production in Ohio was estimated at nearly $2.5 million, according to the Ohio Department of Agriculture Annual Report and Statistics.

The length of season depends on the weather and the trees. As long as day and night temperatures have a big swing to them and the barometric pressure cooperates, the sap will run, Ober said. And the later in the season, the more maple flavor the syrup will have – Ober characterized this syrup as having a little “bark” in it.

But you can’t wait too long, because sap collected as leaves start to bud out has a more vegetative – or “buddy” – flavor.

Ober said that years ago, nearly 80 percent of the landowners in Geauga County had a sugarbush – a group of sugar maples with a sugar house containing a collection point and evaporator to boil sap to syrup. It typically takes about 40 gallons of sap to get one gallon of syrup. Dairying is the primary agricultural business in Geauga County , and maple syrup fits in surprisingly well with the dairy business. “It gives you something to do in early spring before calving and planting start,” Ober said.

Debbie Richards, of Richards Maple Products in Chardon, said syrup used to be a farmer’s first crop. “It would give farmers the money they needed to buy seed and fertilizer,” she said.

Maple, like honey, is a natural sweetener, Richards said. “It’s one of the healthiest sweets around. It’s used by all ages,” she added.

The Place to Be
Between the festival and all the activity taking place within the park district, Geauga County is the place to be during maple season, Ober said.

He chuckled, “Most places in March, when you see steam rising, that’s not a barn burning down – it’s a sugarhouse working hard.”

Visit the events section for additional maple events. Ohio State University Extension offers these facts(PDF) about maple syrup grades, storage and selection.

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