Robin's Outdoors

Originally published in Lancaster Farming.

TOPSFIELD, Maine — Making maple syrup has become a tradition for the Chandler family in Topsfield, Maine.

Bob Chandler is a retired forester. Marge retired from teaching a multi-grade classroom of kindergarten through second grade in a nearby three-room elementary school. Retirement goes by the wayside in late winter and early spring when their sons, Bobby and Bart, and Bart’s wife, Jamie, pitch in to tap trees, collect sap and make maple syrup.

Bobby has moved away from the immediate area and, like his father, is a forester. It’s fitting that a forester is making maple syrup; he obviously enjoys the work. He’s working six days a week, but he’s home on Sundays to help. Bart and Jamie, high school sweethearts, recently bought a house and moved back home to Topsfield. Bart is an engineer whose skills are put to use in the family business. Jamie is the new “Mrs. Chandler” at the three-room elementary school, replacing Marge when she retired.

Chandler’s Sugar Shack is anything but a shack. Stop in to visit!

Chandler’s Sugar Shack LLC started as a hobby five years ago. The goal was to tap 100 to 150 maple trees. They sold 40 gallons of syrup the first year. Now in their fifth year, they have 1,300 trees on tubing and 200 buckets hanging on trees.

“They’re young and they have the energy to do all this,” Bob says. “There’s a lot to it. It’s not a weekend project. It takes a lot of time to get the flagging tied to the trees to lay out a level path for the tubing. You can’t have sags in it. Then they (Bobby and Bart) put up 12-gauge high tensile wire. The tubing is tied to the wire to keep it in place.”

The Chandlers recently built a pump house for the new vacuum pump and moisture filter. The building sits just off the side of the road at the bottom of two hills. It also houses a 500-gallon stainless steel milk tank and other equipment.

“You can tell where the sap is coming from,” Bart says, “by looking at the hoses. This one’s coming in from trees behind the cemetery.” There are five hoses coming into the tank and he knows where each one originates.

While Bart explains the tank, hoses, moisture filter and vacuum pump, Bobby takes a hose from the tank in the pump house to the pickup truck. A plastic 375-gallon portable tank is strapped down in the back of the truck. The pump moves 30 gallons of sap a minute from one tank to the other.

“This is a lot easier and takes a lot less time than emptying buckets,” says Bobby.

You can’t help notice the tube that comes down the hill and crosses the road far above your head. “It fell down a few times,” explains Bobby. “It’s on that big ash tree that moves in the wind. We left it down after a few times and just put it back up when the sap started to run.”

On a recent warm morning, it’s already 40 degrees at 9 a.m., and the road is getting muddy. A truck slides around and makes ruts in the road on the way to the sugar shack. The warmth and sun make for a good sap run. Steam rolls out of the opening in the roof and the air smells faintly of maple syrup.

Gordon and Eva Severance stop by. Eva says, “We came out today because who knows what the road will be like for Maple Sunday.”

Rick Whiting, a neighbor who lives just up the road from the sugar shack, pulls in on his ATV. “A few days ago I had the snowmobile, but the road’s all mud now,” he says.

Conversations carry on about ice fishing and the nice fish being caught, questions and answers about the syrup operation, mini-tours of the equipment, what everyone’s kids are doing and the ever-changing weather. The sugar shack is a meeting place this time of year.

The next truck coming up the drive is Bart and Bobby with the freshly filled tank of sap. Bart backs into a small space between the building’s porch and the firewood. The sap is pumped out of the portable tank and into another 500-gallon stainless steel-lined tank. It goes through a cone-shaped filter before pouring into the tank. They filter it twice to make sure it’s clean, they say.

Back inside, Bob opens a closet door. “Take a look in here. This is new this year. It’s RO, reverse osmosis. That filters the sap,” he says. “The refractometer showed the sap had 1.8 to 2.0 percent sugar when it came in. It’s gotten sweeter as the sap started flowing well. After the sap goes through the reverse osmosis equipment, the water is reduced and the sugar content goes up to 6 or 7 percent. The permeate (distilled water) goes into another 500-gallon tank outside and the concentrate is pumped up to a holding tank above the ceiling. From there the concentrate feeds down into the evaporator.”

When the boiling liquid reaches 219 degrees F, it is ready to be poured off and bottled. The sugar content is now 66 to 68 percent. The Chandlers have designed their own syrup containers this year. Their name is on the container along with labeling requirements and their website, chandlerssugarshack.com. They offer one-half pint to one-half gallon containers for sale to their customers.

When Monday morning rolls around, Bob and Marge are on their own and will be for the entire week.

“It’s not too bad,” Bob says. “Marge tends to the evaporator, grading and bottling by herself when I pick up sap. It doesn’t take too long to fill the tank and drive back.

“This isn’t the hardest part. The stuff that takes the most time is done before the sap starts running. We could use an animal control officer,” Bob says with a slight laugh. “Moose could be a problem in the tubes. We knew we had a leak some where because the amount of pressure didn’t match the amount of sap coming in. We didn’t find the leak until the sap was running good. The boys had to cut out a length of tube that a bear chewed and replace it with a new piece.”

Around noontime, Bart heads for the door with a piece of high tensile wire he and Bobby cut earlier. A piece of wire kinked and snapped, letting the tubing sag.

“Stop at the house and tell your mother I’m ready for lunch now,” Bob says. He started boiling at 6 a.m., and boiling will continue until around 6 p.m.

Bob occasionally rises from his chair by the evaporator to skim foam from the boiling sap or add a drop of organic canola oil to reduce the foaming. When the door to the firebox of the evaporator opens the loud boiling sounds are replaced by the roar of the fire. When the door closes, it’s quiet for only a few seconds. The sap quickly returns to a hard, noisy boil. They burn approximately six cords of wood. Some of it is slab scraps from Bob’s custom sawmill and the rest is hardwood they cut, split and stack.

The Chandlers don’t advertise for Maine Maple Sunday, which will be held this weekend, because they don’t know what the dirt road to the sugar shack will be like. They don’t want anyone to make a long trip and find out that the road isn’t easily passable. As long as the sap is running, though, they’ll be there and people are welcome to stop in. They had so many visitors last year that they had to buy more vanilla ice cream to serve with the fresh syrup. Visitors have come on Maine Maple Sunday from as far away as Texas and Kentucky.

Bob doesn’t know exactly how many gallons of syrup he expects to make this year. “They told us when we bought the RO and vacuum that this would be a transitional year. We tapped more trees, but we’ll boil less sap to make more syrup. How much we make depends on the weather and how the sap runs, and how it goes with the new equipment. We’re learning a lot this year.”

One hundred fifty taps in the beginning has increased to 1,500 taps this year, and they’re not done yet.

“The boys want to increase to around 4,000 taps next year. We’ll lease a lot with around 2,300 trees next year,” Bob said. “This evaporator isn’t big enough for what they want to do next year … but that’s a conversation for another day.”