Maple trees are some of the most populous trees in our New Hampshire forests. Their abundance and annual generous sap flow has inspired many to forage this sweet treat, seemingly free for the taking. But the energy and nuanced skill required in turning this sap into our famously well-loved pancake topping is ultimately a labor of love. Gone are the days of a small sugar bush offering a form of financial self-sufficiency, as made famous by historic back-to-the-landers Helen and Scott Nearing. Small scale maple makers may be able to stock their own maple coffers for the year, but it will do little for their bank accounts. Their major investments are in community and in keeping tradition alive.

A considerable portion of the maple produced in New Hampshire is still made by small backyard sugar houses like Fieldstone Farm in Rindge, NH. Dana Ryll, and his wife Becky, probably started out much like many backyard sugar makers do, small, with a few taps in the backyard and a little custom stainless steel pan that fit over the woodstove in the barn. As he tried to refine his syrup and his process, he encountered some sticky situations.

The final steps of syrup making require careful attention. The difference between shelf stable syrup and an unrecoverably burned mess can be minutes and for that reason, those without an evaporator, often bring in the syrup to finish over the stove inside. Ryll was no different. He carefully settled the syrup pan over all four of his electric burners not realizing he would overheat the elements and ruin the stove. A new stove was in short order and so was a new syrup making method. The next season, Ryll invested in a little evaporator that he set up under a canopy in the driveway. That is, until a gusty wind, typical of the raw sugaring days in early March, captured the canopy, dumping a full batch of almost done syrup and snapping the legs of the evaporator. The evaporator found a temporary home in the tractor shed where it was safe from the wind, but without proper ventilation for the sweet copious steam, it quickly became a sweat lodge.

In 2002, Ryll started construction on the permanent sugar house that would welcome so many visitors over the coming years. A bigger evaporator followed, then a reverse osmosis machine, followed by a bigger reverse osmosis machine, and vacuum pumps. The Rylls harvest from the trees on just two other properties at the base of Mt. Monadnock, putting in 800 taps. At their largest scale, they were almost a third larger, but lost a significant portion of a sugar bush to winter ice damage. The Rylls harvest most of the wood they need to run their evaporator from their property and are committed to the wood-fired arch, a strategy that may not be as hands-free or as efficient as running one on oil,but connects them with 100s of years of tradition. For now, the Rylls seemed to have found their “production sweet spot” of about 200 gallons a year, an amount that sustains the current costs of the business. At this scale however, the maple proceeds will never be enough to recoup the initial investment of infrastructure and equipment. That was a downpayment to the homesteading ethic and a boon to all of us who get to partake in the free-flowing samples of warm syrup come this weekend.

Ryll has been participating in the Maple Sugar weekend, organized by the New Hampshire Maple Association, for as long as he can remember. Each year over the course of the weekend, Fieldstone Farm sees 100s of visitors, some from as far as Maine and Boston. The Rylls used to go “all out,” he says, offering hot dogs and soft drinks, but has since found that most are adequately satiated by coffee and shots of hot maple syrup drawn fresh from the evaporator. They have never missed a weekend, even during the COVID pandemic, when their doors remained open. The resulting one way traffic flow they adopted during that time has been helpful in managing the crowds since. The concentration of visitors may be intense, but the high traffic allows the Rylls to sell almost all of their 200 gallons of product in one weekend. Most years, this weekend is appropriately scheduled so that the bulk of their production is complete. This year’s weather was particularly accommodating, the early warm weather in February allowed the Rylls to have already made 35 gallons before they even would have traditionally tapped.

Hopping from sugarhouse to sugarhouse on Maple Weekend is more than a maple purchasing opportunity, it is a privileged look at the diversity of small scale farms and homesteads. The Rylls, who both work full-time outside jobs, don’t just do maple at Fieldstone, they also raise beef cattle. Going to their farm is an opportunity to visit the animals, purchase grass fed beef, warm up by the fire ring, and to stand in awe of their famous 16 year old pet Buffalo, Abe.

Most sugar makers, backyard or commercial, are artisans of their craft. They can argue the effects of their process on the product and taste the subtleties of the season as the declining sugar ratio of the sap affects the final outcome. These nuances may be lost on the less initiated, but traveling from location to location, what is clear is that each sugar house is unique, each a part of a sweet constellation dotting the still frozen back roads of New England .

For more information on Maple Weekend and Maple Producers near you, check out nhmapleproducers.com and the article and index contained in last week’s issue of ELF.

An additional note on buying Maple: Maple Grades have changed! Maple syrup is graded according to its color, a by-product of process and the percentage of sugar contained in the sap. New Maple grades are now all called Grade A, but are designated Golden, Amber, Dark or Very Dark. The darker the color, the stronger the flavor. If you were previously a fan of Grade B, you are now looking to buy Grade A, very dark.

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