Glasgow Daily Times, Glasgow, KY

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March 11, 2010

The making of maple syrup

By JIMMY LOWE Special to the Daily Times

GLASGOW — Sophie and I are both watching Mark Green skim the sap as it boils in the kettle. We’re in the Greens’ big back yard, near where it meets the woods.

It’s a most pleasant spring-like afternoon where Mark and Betty Green live, a few miles south of Glasgow. The logs sizzle and crackle, causing the flames to smoke and curl around the kettle. The sap bubbles. From somewhere in the woods, an owl hoots. Sophie’s ears perk up and she barks a response. She’s probably saying she can’t be bothered right now because she’s hankering for a taste of something sweet.

I’m as fascinated by this process as is the friendly Collie.

Mark’s been at this task for a while and he explains, “You boil away everything that doesn’t look like maple syrup.”

Betty joins us and says, “We didn’t know what, if anything, we would get. When we first tapped the trees, it was exciting to hear that drip, drip, drip.”

The sap rises during February and early March, and it’s maple syrup time. So, a few weeks ago, Mark began drilling holes into 19 of their hard maple trees. “The old timers called these trees, Sugar Maples,” he tells me, “and they are still called that for good reason because of their high sugar content.”

With a spile and tube, he collected the sap into jugs and stored them for three or four days. “It will spoil if you keep it too long. It does not improve with age,” he cautions.

After boiling for ten hours or so, he will strain the sap through a cheese cloth and then pour it through filters. Finally, it will be finished inside the house by cooking on the stove. Then it will be ready to enjoy with pancakes, oatmeal, biscuits, or blueberry muffins.

Mark assures me that it takes plenty of hours of labor to produce the syrup. “If you go into the grocery store and buy a 12 ounce jar for $7, you might think that’s high—but, if you’ve done the work, you’ll think it ought to be about $900.”

“So what made you want to do this?” I ask.

“It was one of the things on my bucket list,” he replies.

Betty mentions that her mother used to make maple sugar back in the 1920s.

Mark says he was also inspired by a friend back in Ohio. (The Greens lived and worked for several years in Cincinnati before retiring and returning back home to the local area a couple of years ago.)

This is the first year the Greens have made the syrup, and they have been successful.

Betty gave me a sample. Yep, trust me, they have been very successful, indeed!

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