CONWAY — Along with longer days and warmer weather, a third harbinger of spring for Western Massachusetts is the sweet-smelling plumes of steam rising from local sugarhouses.
To celebrate this turn of the season and the start of March as Massachusetts Maple Month, state Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Kathleen Theoharides, state Department of Agricultural Resources Commissioner John Lebeaux, state Rep. Natalie Blais, D-Sunderland, and representatives from the Massachusetts Maple Producers Association visited Stonegate Farm Sugarhouse in Conway for the first stop in a tour of sugarhouses across the state.
Maple Month is an annual recognition of Massachusetts’ many maple producers, and events such as Monday’s encourage residents to purchase locally produced maple products. Theoharides and Lebeaux said Monday’s tour celebrated harvest of the “first agricultural crop of the year.”
“For generations, maple syrup producers have provided the commonwealth and beyond with delicious products for us all to enjoy,” Theoharides said. “Through the purchasing of maple syrup products made right here in Massachusetts, we are greatly supporting producers, their families and local businesses, which has a lasting impact on the state’s regional economies.”
Stonegate Farm Sugarhouse owner Dana Goodfield showed Lebeaux, Theoharides and other guests a new, electronic system for monitoring his sap lines.
“At the end of all our main lines, we have a transmitter,” Goodfield said. “It shows the vacuum at all these places. … The big purpose of this here is that you’re always having animals that chew on the lines, or tree limbs that are falling. So before you would be down at the pump house, see we lost 5 inches of vacuum and go, ‘Well where is the problem?’”
The new system isolates the issue to a specific area, and notifies Goodfield of which line needs to be fixed. The system can also be accessed through an internet connection, allowing him to monitor the lines from nearly anywhere.
Managing the evaporator and serving syrup samples Monday was Tom Pleasant and Chuck Williams, both of whom work with Goodfield. Maple syrup has been produced in Massachusetts for over 100 years, and the process remains mostly the same. Sap from sugar maple trees is collected and boiled down to an exact consistency for use as a versatile sweetener and cooking ingredient. While the process remains the same, management practices have made the maple industry far more environmentally sustainable in recent decades.
Lebeaux said advances in technology, and some practices, for producing syrup have helped sustain the goal of protecting the local area as an active sugar bush and using it in an environmentally sound manner. The more than 300 sugar makers in Massachusetts use tapping practices that protect trees and many use high-efficiency evaporators and reverse osmosis machines, dramatically reducing the carbon footprint of their boiling processes.
Last year, Colrain’s Sunrise Farm purchased a fully solar-powered evaporator. Lebeaux noted the third stop in Monday’s tour, Justamere Tree Farm in Worthington, operates 100 percent off the grid.
Massachusetts sugar makers produce around 70,000 gallons of syrup each year, and steward more than 15,000 acres of forest. Maple sugaring profits allow for many farms to stay in business year-round by serving as a secondary crop and a secondary source of income. The economic impact of the industry is more than $5 million per year, and since most Massachusetts syrup is sold in-state directly from farmers to consumers, that impact is multiplied many times over.
Conditions this season have been excellent, with weather remaining cold through February, the thaw happening gradually, and a blanket of snow in the woods to help moderate any sudden fluctuations that could otherwise cause the season to end early and abruptly. With warmer weather coming this week, Massachusetts Maple Producers Association President and Boyden Brothers Maple co-owner Howard Boyden said it could be a good harvest.
“It looks like this is going to be what I call ‘sap-ageddon,’” Boyden said. “That’s when you’re swimming in it up to your eyes — treading water and getting short of breath. … But that’s what we live for. I’ve got syrup in my veins.”
Zack DeLuca can be reached at zdeluca@recorder.com or 413-930-4579.