Prolonged wintry weather has slowed this year’s sap run, but a Gorham sugarhouse will turn sap into syrup and serve up a pancake breakfast to the public on Maine Maple Sunday, March 22.
Sap collection appears to be later than usual this year around the state. Bob Parsons of Parsons Maple Products, 322 Buck St., in Gorham, said on Tuesday they expected to start collecting sap beginning Wednesday.
“Sap is running this afternoon. It’s actually running a steady drizzle,” Parsons said Tuesday, with Sunday’s annual statewide celebration just days away.
Parsons and his brother Russell are dairy farmers besides producing maple syrup. On Sunday, they’ll serve pancakes with maple syrup, sausage, bacon and coffee; breakfast cost is $7. Also, Parsons will have maple syrup to sell and will serve samples of maple syrup over ice cream.
This year marks the 20th that the Parsons’ operation has participated in Maine Maple Sunday. They’ll be open from 8 a.m.-5 p.m.
The Parsonses will be among the numerous Maine sugarhouses open to the public this Sunday and it’s a tasty industry for the economy.
“Maine’s maple industry contributes an estimated $27.7 million directly to the Maine economy according to a UMaine study,” Gov. Paul LePage said in a Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry statement on March 16.
According to state figures, Maine has the third largest maple industry in the country. LePage said the industry employs “805 full and part-time jobs and $25.1 million in labor income.”
On Maine Maple Sunday, visitors flock to the sugarhouses. Bob Parsons recalled that in 2013, their biggest year, they cooked 800 pancakes in four hours.
The brothers said 2015 marks the second consecutive year that sap has run late. Attendance sagged last year, however, coinciding with a late sap run.
Bob Parsons said that last year sap didn’t run until March 14, and Russell Parsons added that last year was a bad one for the crop. Last year, sap continued to run the first seven days in April.
Four years ago, they collected 8,000 gallons of sap, compared to 4,000 in 2014.
Cold temperatures and snow depth have proved challenging this year.
“We need cold and thaw,” Russell Parsons said. “We have a little window to work in,” he said as they readied to collect sap.
Last week, Russell Parsons was busy trudging through deep snow off Phinney Street to tap trees, drilling holes with a gasoline-powered drill. His son, Adam Parsons, was attaching tubes to the taps to collect the sap when it ran.
The family planned 1,400 taps on maple trees. Installing taps consumes 11 days in the Parsons’ operation.
Bob Parsons said producing maple syrup is fun but time consuming.
“It’s like all farming, it’s just time,” Parsons said.
When weather cooperates, sap flows from the taps in the trees through the tubes to collector containers that the Parsonses have spaced among the maples. Optimal temperatures for a good sap run, Bob Parsons said, are 25 degrees at night and warming up to 38-40 degrees days.
“It tends to run on a cloudy, raw day,” he said. “It likes wind out of the west.”
Parsons said on Tuesday that a producer upstate didn’t have a drop of sap. But, Parsons hoped this week to collect “six or seven hundred” gallons of sap.
“If sap runs good, should get 1,000 gallons,” he said.
They have a stainless steel tank on a truck to haul the sap to their sugarhouse at the farm on Buck Street where a wood fire fuels an evaporator boiling down the sap. Forty gallons of sap is needed to produce one gallon of syrup.
The Parsons brothers plan to fire up on Sunday so the public can view the process of turning sap into syrup.
Maine Maple Producers Association is reporting on its website that “plenty of syrup” should be made in time for the 32nd annual Maine Maple Sunday.
“If the weather is good, nearly 100,000 people will attend Maine Maple Sunday at one of the many sugarhouses around Maine,” the association posted.
Adam Parsons of Gorham attaches tubes to taps in maple trees on Phinney Street to capture sap to produce maple syrup at Parsons Maple Products in Gorham.Staff photo by Robert LowellSend questions/comments to the editors.
