WEST NEWFIELD — On a 40 degree spring day you can hear the sap drip, drip, dripping from the maple trees and into the buckets, veteran maple syrup producer Bruce Bryant said.
It was Tuesday and his sons, Michael and Mark, owners of Hilltop Boilers, were out on the road in their pick-up trucks, collecting sap that they were to boil that night into Maine’s sweetest, most flavorful treat. Bryant was preparing to collect syrup too, sticking closer to home ”“ he was collecting in a stand of trees on the family farm. Another son, Matthew, also pitches in.
Eight days from now, there will be people from all over visiting Hilltop Boilers sugarhouse on Elm Street in West Newfield, one of several sugarhouses that will be open for Maine Maple Sunday, March 27.
Like most operations of its size, Hilltop Boilers has always been a family operation, started, Marion Bryant said, when the boys were younger, to teach them the principles of business. The boys now have families of their own, and everyone takes part in making the maple season a success. Friends have helped, too, especially in the lead-up to Maine Maple Sunday.
Terry and Sandy Orr of North Waterboro have been friends of the Bryant family for 30 years. Their children attended the same high school and the families have been close, she said.
Bryant said Terry Orr often helped hay in the summer, when his day job was done, and the Orrs always lent a hand at maple syruping time, helping the extended Bryant family prepare for the 3,500 visitors who stop by on the fourth Sunday in March to watch the syrup-making process and sample nature’s elixir. Syrup-making and preparing for maple Sunday is a work-intensive process.
This year, Sandy Orr is with the Bryant family in their hearts and in their thoughts as they get ready for Maine Maple Sunday.
She died in January, just a few short weeks after a diagnosis of liver cancer, said Marion Bryant.
“It was a real blow to all of us,” she said.
Many area residents, particularly those in Waterboro, will remember Orr, who was secretary at Waterboro Elementary School for more than two dozen years.
The Bryant family wanted to do something to honor their friend, and decided to contribute a portion of the proceeds from sales of their maple whoopie pies to the One Day at a Time Fund at the Cancer Care Center of York County. A tent will be set up at the Maine Maple Sunday open house and a video honoring Orr’s life will be shown, said Bryant.
“We chose the whoopie pies because they’re such a big hit,” said Marion Bryant.
Bruce Bryant estimated 2,500 maple whoopie pies went out the door on Maine Maple Sunday last year.
Hilltop Boilers began in the mid-1980s when Bryant, a builder, was looking at a roofing job and saw the owner of the property had some syrup-making equipment. He, Mark and Michael pooled together to buy the equipment and set to making syrup. They began tapping 50 to 100 trees; these days they tap about 800, and collect most of it in buckets, since the trees they tap are scattered around Newfield too far afield, for the most part, to use hose, Bryant said. They use a wood-fired evaporator to reduce the watery sap to spring’s tastiest treasure.
As well as selling maple syrup, maple cream spread, pancake mix and other value-added products at the Maine Maple Sunday open house, there are games for children, who have a chance to name a new calf or guess the weight of a farm pig. A sap-lugging contest is designed for the youth, but sometimes adults take part too, Bruce Bryant said.
And as Maine Maple Sunday draws closer, the family thinks of their friends.
“She was a very giving person, she gave and gave,” said Marion Bryant of Sandy Orr. “We’re trying to honor what she gave not only to us, but to so many.”
— Senior Staff Writer Tammy Wells can be contacted at 324-4444 or twells@journaltribune.com.
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