(Originally published as front-page article in the local newspaper, Broader View Weekly, March 21, 2013. )

My family’s memories: 

Sharing about the old ways of collecting sap and making syrup brought to mind the stories my mother has shared over the years.  The Tillapaugh family of 12 children in Carlisle, New York made and sold maple syrup for several generations, and my cousins continue the annual tradition today.  My mother, Reba, and her younger sister, Lois, readily recall the childhood fun, albeit hard work, of helping their dad and older siblings during the 1930s and 1940s.  Lois shared with me, “As the youngest I did look forward to maple syrup time.  A lot of hard work, but worth it, with memories forever.” 

Their dad and older brothers used a hand-turned brace to drill holes in about 300-plus trees.  They’d pound in the spiles from which buckets were hung, with lids placed by the younger girls.  When the sap ran, besides regular dairy farm chores and caring for a few thousand chickens, they had daily sap gathering.  This involved dumping each bucket’s worth into a holding tank on a large bobsled pulled by a team of black Shires (Dick and Daisy) or Belgians (Bunny, Nell, and Tub) on a trail through the woods.  My mother said that if rain got into the buckets it turned the sap brown, and they threw that out.  And, they often trekked the woods to gather sap with two or more feet of snow on the ground.

Carlisle’s woods are not like those in our south-central finger lakes region.  Carlisle has rolling hills with limestone boulder outcroppings, many crevices and mini-caves.  With Howe’s Cavern near Cobleskill, the town of Carlisle and the Tillapaugh farm also have small caves with nooks and crannies throughout the woods.  There was a defined trail for the horses through the woods, but everyone had to walk carefully among the trees.  I remember as a child seeing a good-sized cave opening in the ground in the woodlot next to one of the farm pastures, so I can attest to their having had an interesting trek among the rocky outcroppings to collect sap.

With a love for horses since my childhood when my father farmed with Belgians (and Clydesdales before marrying my mom), I can visualize the Tillapaugh’s harnessing their black Shires with flowing white “feathers” on the lower legs, listening to them clop along, stepping high in unison.  I can imagine the creaking harness and traces, maybe bells tinkling, the big sled’s runners scraping along a gravel road or gliding atop the snow. 

At this point, my mother chuckled to recall a day she rode out on the sled carrying the sap tank with an older brother, Maynard.  When he jumped off as they went up a hill, the sap tank tilted and she fell off, the sled nearly running over her but Maynard stopped the horses just in time.  Another time, she got a tiny piece of metal in her eye from a bucket lid.  The doctor had a large magnet to draw the speck out, but she refused to let him, petrified it would pull her eye out!  She has no idea how the metal ever did get out of her eye, but there was no damage.

When the holding tank was full, it was taken to the sap hut, and sap drained into one of two 4x8-10 foot evaporator pans over a wood fire.  I questioned her about the size of those pans, but she was adamant about the very large size.  Considering her memory has not failed her for other details, I saw online there were, indeed, evaporator pans this large.  The oldest brothers stayed at the sap hut boiling all night, often around the clock, watching the temperatures carefully with thermometers.  Lois also recalls their mother made lunches which the girls took out to their brothers.  

My mother agreed with my aunt who said that “when the partially cooked syrup was ready, it was brought to the house in milk cans.  Mom would finish boiling it to the correct temperature over a kerosene stove in the summer kitchen, and strain it through felt into gallon glass jugs, mostly for home use, some to sell.”  My mom added, “Some syrup was boiled down more to make maple candy, or poured over the snow for a delicious sweet chewy treat.”

Maple syrup helped their family deal with sugar shortages and rationing during the Great Depression and World War II.  At the end of the season came the hard work of cleaning all the equipment, repeated when the season started.

After the youngest Tillapaugh brothers, Winfred and Floyd, retired and sold the family dairy herd in 1974, they built a modern and efficient sap hut closer to home.  Using both pails and plastic tubing, Floyd’s son, Duane, recalls other cousins helping them tap a few hundred trees in a venture which eventually grew to around 1000 trees.  “Back then, we put a pill in the drilled hole [to kill] bacteria.  I believe that’s illegal now.  We burned wood, but Dad rigged up a thing that would blow old motor oil in when it was close to syrup [stage] to make the fire hotter to push it to syrup.”  They sold syrup from home in pint, quart, half-gallon and gallon containers, also making maple cream and candy.  Their peak years produced about 200-250 gallons of syrup annually.  That was, indeed, a sizeable maple syrup operation!

I researched online articles about the use of paraformaldehyde pills/tablets in the tap hole years ago.  Controversy has surrounded its benefits of cutting bacteria and helping the tapped tree heal versus the pills leading to fungi setting in with increased decay versus the fact that formaldehyde was making its way into food for human consumption.  Therefore, its use became illegal in the 1980s.

Knowing that Native Americans made maple syrup centuries ago, I delved into their sugaring process.  They would make a slash in a sugar maple tree, collecting the sap as it dripped out.  Hollowed out logs were filled with fresh sap, and white-hot field stones were added to bring the sap to boil.  The Indians repeated this process until syrup stage was reached, or until they had crystallized sugar.  When the first Europeans arrived, the Indians traded maple sugar for other products, and taught their sugaring secrets to the new settlers.  

Referred by my cousin, Bruce Tillapaugh, a retired Cooperative Extension agent, I contacted Stephen Childs, the New York Maple Specialist at Cornell University.  Childs said, “Cornell has a number of resources for backyarders and beginning maple producers.  Much of the information is available online at Cornell Maple.  We have a Beginner DVD and Cornell Maple Videos.  We hold many Beginner Workshops in the fall and winter.  A maple camp is held in June that is three full days of instruction for new commercial producers or small producers planning to expand.  There are recorded webinar programs online that interested persons can watch.”

I also found a brochure online for the beginner written by a local resident:  “Maple Syrup Production for the Beginner” by Anni L. Davenport, School of Forest Resources, The Pennsylvania State University; Lewis Staats, Dept. of Natural Resources, Cornell University, Cornell Cooperative Extension, 1998.

Maple syrup not only tastes good, but with a little more research, I learned it’s good for you!  It is a natural source of manganese and zinc, important for our immune defense systems.  Zinc is an antioxidant which protects our heart by decreasing atherosclerosis and helping prevent damage to the inner lining of blood vessels.  It is also known that a zinc deficiency can lead to a higher risk of prostate cancer.  Zinc supplementation is used by healthcare practitioners to help reduce prostate enlargement.  Studies have also found that adults with a deficiency in manganese have decreased levels of HDL, the good cholesterol.  Manganese helps lessen inflammation, key to healing.  Just one ounce of maple syrup holds 22% of the daily requirement of this key trace mineral. 

Syrup also contains iron, calcium and potassium which help repair damaged muscle and cells.  It can settle digestive problems.  It can help keep bones strong and blood sugar levels normal, help keep white blood cell counts up to protect against colds and viruses, and maple syrup is not a common allergen.

With all the goodness going for itself, 100% pure maple syrup is truly worth all that hard work!  Enjoy!