RobertNesbitt4110

=A MAINE TRADITION=

By: Robert Nesbitt robbie_nesbitt@hotmail.com photo courtesy of wida.org

MAINE- Its spring and for a select group of Mainers that means maple syrup season. The Maple Syrup Industry is a big deal in our state, and for me personally maple syrup is more of a family memory. My dad has tapped trees the old fashioned way my entire life. My sisters and I would always go out with him to collect sap every spring growing up. It was never about numbers and production costs, but more about a seasonal chore that always brought us closer as a family. While at the same time making delicious maple syrup to enjoy at the breakfast table. This local industry has a rich heritage behind it. The first people to make maple syrup, or maple sugar as they referred to it, were the Native Americans of the Northeast. At the time they used it for breads, stews, teas, and vegetables. The sweet products of maple trees are now specialty items. Over the years, the price of cane sugar fell dramatically, and now cane sugar is the variety most Americans use every day. The old tradition of tapping trees and hanging buckets to collect syrup has changed quit a bit for many collectors in Maine. When driving from Milo to Dover Foxcroft you’ll catch glimpses in the trees every few miles of long blue tubes stretching from tree to tree. These plastic tubes carry the sap from each tree to a central location. The tubes also protect sap from dirt and bacteria. The Bangor Daily recently reported that this years season for Maple syrup producers in Maine yielded lower amounts than usual. Lyle Merrifield, President of the Maine Maple Producers Association, told the Bangor paper that the reason for lower yields was due to such a early tapping season. “Looking back right now, if I personally would have tapped on February first, I probably would have had a normal season,” said Merrifield. “We’re probably one-third off on the farm here.” In a normal season in northern Somerset County syrup producers begin tapping trees around March 20, but Maine Maple Product’s workers were tapping trees weeks earlier than that. According to the New England Agricultural Statistics Service, Maine had a record-high production in 2009, producing 395,000 gallons of syrup. That number is about 27 percent of the syrup produced in New England last year, ranking Maine second in production in the nation.