Maine Seasons: Maine Maple Sunday

For 36 years, Maine has celebrated a tradition that has one foot firmly in winter and one in spring. It is called Maine Maple Sunday. It happens the fourth Sunday in March, which according to the calendar is spring but can often still be wintry in Maine. This year, on March 24, it was definitely both, with a mix of snow and mud on the ground and temps in the 40s with the sun brightly shining, a perfect day to get out, visit a local sugar shack or farm, and sample some freshly boiled maple syrup.

My hubbie at this sweet sugar shack.
 Notice the smoke rising in the top right from the boiling operation.

We took a quick visit to a local farm in Newcastle called Sweet Woods Farm. This family-run farm only started its sugaring operation in 2018, but already they have a fine set up for brewing sticky maple sap into maple syrup. From the tapped trees they've run a long line to storage tanks. (You can see more of their operation on their Facebook page.) There the sap is boiled down until it becomes the thick sweet pancake topping we all love.

There are many uses for syrup beyond breakfast. Online I read suggestions for putting it in your hot drinks, and the Maine Maple Producers website offers other recipes that utilize maple syrup. The brochure provided by Sweet Woods Farm also offered that maple syrup has "a larger percentage of naturally present nutrients and antioxidants compared to other sweeteners." Those natural ingredients are riboflavin, manganese, and zinc. This is a great sales pitch in the age of eating healthy. I'm in!

Going to a Maine Maple Sunday event got us out of the house in the long fallow mud season when spring fever is setting in hard. It is great for kids and allows for some outdoor exploration and learning. It also gets you out in the community, supports a local farmer, and gets you breathing in some of that winter/spring air. Plus there is nothing quite like the smoky sweet steam rising from a pot of boiling sap. The fresh-off-the stove taste definitely can't be beat. Most farms offer free samples, usually on vanilla ice cream. So delicious. Boothbay Craft Brewery was also offering samples of a beer made with Sweet Wood's maple syrup and then set to age in bourbon barrels that had previously held syrup! It was most flavorful, although admittedly I can't stand beer. Blue Tin Farm from nearby Edgecomb, Maine, brought their goats to visit and goat milk soap and lotions to sell. Tours of the sugar bush were offered to get a better understanding of how the how process works. Every open sugaring operation offers different things. Some simply say to come over and visit with us while we boil. Its a long process and takes many hours of feeding the fire so syrup makers have to be on hand the entire time and can use some company!

Sweet little goats from Blue Tin Farm at Maine Maple Sunday.

The Maine Maple Producers website offers so much more information, recipes, news, events, a member directory, and farms that participate in the open farm day.

From the website I learned that native Americans would boil sap by heating stones and dropping them into containers with the sap before colonists arrived with cast-iron kettles.

It seems like an unlikely time of year to produce something so yummy but I also learned that the magic of maple sugar season is directly tied to the "warm, sunny days and below freezing nights" of late winter and early spring that cause the sap to start running through the maple trees. So March is the actually the perfect time of year. As more hobby farmers and young people are returning to agricultural practices in Maine, more people are tapping trees it seems than I remember in my childhood. Many do it for a hobby but its important to producers to have open farm days such as Maine Maple Sunday because it can jump start sales and introduce people to the magical process of sugar sap season. Go buy ye some Maple Syrup from Maine!