Maple syrup season was solid, but virus rules cut into sales

“Overall, the season was a little warmer, it started earlier, ended earlier and the yield was good,” said Mark Isselhardt, the maple specialist at the University of Vermont extension service.

“They were a little lonely this year because they couldn’t have visitors, but they were hard at work making beautiful maple syrup,” said Anson Tebbetts, Vermont secretary of agriculture, as the pandemic kept visitors out of Vermont’s sugarhouses.

Now, though, sugarmakers who don’t sell their syrup in bulk have to figure out how to offload it, as the pandemic continues to keep people away from their sugarhouses and home sales operations.

“Most sugarmakers will tell you they got 100 percent, or 110 or 120. In our case, we’re at 107 percent, so it was a good year,” said Arnie Piper, co-owner of Umbrella Hill Maple in Garfield and president of the Lamoille County Maple Sugar Makers Association.

“We were very happy; we ended up making as many gallons as we’ve ever made,” said George Cook, who runs his small operation in Hyde Park with his wife, Dot. “Fifty-six gallons on 170 taps with excellent flavor throughout.”

“We’re definitely above our average for the last couple of years,” said Ira Marvin, whose family owns the Butternut Mountain Farm sugarhouse in Johnson and the maple sugar company by the same name in Morrisville. “It was a combination of a little less snow and better weather.”

“We set a personal record for production,” said Sam von Trapp of Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe.

In Vermont, maple syrup is big business. Last year, Vermont produced more than 2 million gallons of syrup, more than any other state. New York is next, averaging about 760,000 gallons per year; Maine is third at just over 700,000. Quebec is the biggest maple syrup producer in the world, more than 6.5 million gallons a year.

Like other people working in Vermont’s agricultural economy, sugarmakers were allowed to continue producing that liquid gold as an essential business.

“Production wasn’t affected by the coronavirus, because you’re already isolated, working in the woods or in the sugarhouse. It did not slow down manufacturing,” said Cory Ayotte, communications director for the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers’ Association. “You talk to people who say they’re adjusting to working at home, but sugarmakers have been doing that the whole time.”

Overall, Isselhardt thinks 2020 will go down as an average year in terms of total syrup production in Vermont.

“By and large, people have done pretty well,” he said. “Most are right around their expected average. A few people are a little below that, but some are considerably above it.”

Sales issues

Even as the economy shut down, it was business as usual for companies that buy syrup in bulk, like the Marvin family’s Vermont Maple Sugar Co.

But many producers sell syrup for individual consumption, and they’ve had to adapt in a time when no customers are coming to their sugarhouses.

“A lot of sugarmakers have moved all their sales online, and a lot of them are saying that people are stocking up, like toilet paper,” Ayotte said.

Many sugarmakers sell their product at farmers markets, which are cleared to open May 1 in Vermont, with sharp restrictions for safety reasons.

Some sellers are doing curbside pickup, Ayotte said, and others are doing delivery.

The Rooney family has a 2,500-tap sugarbush in Morrisville, and “most of our customers are restaurants or people that come directly to the farmhouse,” Selena Rooney said. So, she and her family had to feel out a new path forward.

Sales took a pretty hard hit initially, but the family’s mail-order business for syrup has since skyrocketed, she said. Rooney’s college-age children were also home to help with sugaring this year, and brought their tech savvy to the operation.

“We have a Venmo account now; people can Venmo us the money and we’ll leave the syrup outside for them,” Rooney said.

“We have a lot of syrup on hand that didn’t get sold during the season,” like it normally does, Cook said. Now they hope to sell it at small events and farmers markets.

“It’s been a good production year for us, but no one is around to buy it,” said Robin Pearson. She and her husband, Steve, run Stowe Maple Products, and after 33 years of selling to tourists at their sugarhouse on Route 100, the lack of visitors is pushing the Pearsons into the world of technology.

“This pandemic is what’s going to kick us out of our nice, comfortable rut,” Robin Pearson said. “We’re going to build a website.”

“In this environment, I think we’re all going to have to get creative,” Steve Pearson said. A website may help, but he’s keeping his expectations in check.

“Before the shutdown and physical distancing, one of the most important parts of our business was the personal time we spent in our small shop entertaining and educating our visitors,” he said. “That’s now certainly gone for a while and maybe a long while. I don’t think a website is going to replace that.

“Sugarmakers have a few things going for them,” Isselhardt said. “Syrup isn’t perishable like milk, so they can hold on to it longer.”

Low sugar content

Cook, who used to work as a maple specialist with UVM Extension, has heard many sugarmakers had lower-than-usual sugar concentration in their sap this season.

The Cooks did, too.

“A lot of years, we average about 2 percent sugar in our sap,” Cook said. This year, their sap reached 2 percent only once, averaging about 1.5 percent sugar and dropping to 1 percent a couple of days.

The old reference point says it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup; with the sugar content this season, the Cooks needed 60 gallons of sap most days to make one gallon of syrup.

“It meant working through a lot of sap to get the syrup you got,” Cook said. “Anyone with an RO reverse osmosis machine loved that equipment this year.”

Filtering sap through an RO ups the sugar content before it’s boiled to produce syrup, speeding up the process and cutting back on the amount of wood or fuel needed to boil the sap.

The Cooks bought an RO a few years ago and “it was just a lifesaver this year.”

“We processed more sap this year than ever,” Cook said — 3,100 gallons, up from the typical 2,500.

By and large, Isselhardt hears that syrup quality has been high.

The Rooneys saw a good mix of flavors and colors in their syrup.

“It was a good mix of fancy, amber rich and dark robust,” Selena Rooney said. More dark syrup is a good thing, at least for them, because many people want darker syrup for their table.

“Last year we made almost all fancy, and we didn’t have enough dark robust for customers. We made a good amount of everything this year, so we can keep everyone happy,” Rooney said.

The Pearsons made a bit of fancy this season but mostly medium amber.

“It’s too bad the tap holes gave out with this last week of good sugaring weather, because we could have used more dark amber,” Steven Pearson said just after they closed up shop.