Maple Events

Ohio Maple Days – 2024 Recap

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Maple Days was a great success again this early December with a wonderful slate of speakers, and we matched last year’s attendance despite landing on the weekend of Ohio’s deer gun season to which reason we lacked a score or more of regular attendees.

On Friday afternoon, Ohio State’s David Marrison (Farm Management Field Specialist) and Robert Moore (OSU Agricultural and Resource Law Program Attorney) hosted 42 people in an Estate Planning workshop.  Attendees were coached through the challenging but necessary process of planning for the future.  Intentionally planning one’s own legacy can be a daunting task, but the workshop is designed around just that process – actively planning for the future of one’s farm, or for many peoples’ cases – one’s sugarhouse.  The event received enthusiast reviews from both participants and hosts alike.

December 7th was the Saturday main event.  Things kicked off with a talk from Keith Libben from Ohio’s Department of Agriculture.  Much ado has been made of the Natural Resource Conservation Service’s technical and cost-share assistance for sugarmakers, but this year’s talk from Keith featured some fantastic success stories that producers could easily connect with.  A big thanks to Jen Freeman for assembling an all-star panel that discussed all things filtering, sap storage, and syrup bottling…and I mean all things.  The amount of depth and breadth that was covered in that hour was astounding, and the steady flow of questions and comments from the audience was a great indicator of a great session.  A series of maple-related wildlife updates reminded the audience that wildlife are a true Jekyll and Hyde of the sugarbush.

Bridging the morning session into the afternoon announcements of the John Berry Maple Syrup Contest was a talk on USDA syrup standards and grading.  The interactive elements of that session were a clear testament to the fact that while the basics of grading are well understood, practice makes perfect even for the most experienced of maple producers.  And speaking of maple syrup contests, here’s a rundown of the deserving 2024 winners!

Delicate: No entries qualified, there’s your chance for next year folks!
Amber: 1st – Bruce Kavanaugh, 2nd – Aggie Sojka-Sperry
Dark: 1st – Ohio State University-Mansfield, 2nd – Bonhomie Acres, 3rd – Aggie Sojka-Sperry
Very Dark: 1st – Charles Hammer, 2nd – Bonhomie Acres, and 3rd – Ohio State University-Mansfield

The Dick Schoor Small Producer Award went to Bruce Kavanaugh, and Dan and Kelly Brown from Bonhomie Acres took the Hilton Farley Best-of-Show Award.  A People’s Choice contest was well worth the extra effort to set up, and lots of folks participated.  The Browns with Bonhomie Acres claimed the Delicate category, Dave and Christina Remy won by popular vote in the Amber and Dark grades, and Gay & Galen Smith with Double G Maple took the Very Dark category.  We hope participation in the John Berry Maple Syrup Contest continues to grow as the competition grading now incorporates a phenomenal opportunity to glean feedback on your syrup’s grade, color, clarity, density, and flavor thanks to a new form crafted by Jake Nicholson and adapted from forms used in syrup contests elsewhere.

Zac Smith from University of Vermont anchored the afternoon session with a presentation on marketing strategies for maple producers.  We look forward to hosting the UVM team back in 2025 to talk more about the consumer part of the marketing equation.  Always good to have our friends visit from the north woods.

The afternoon session split led part of the audience through a couple of talks focused on managing a timber sale and safe chainsaw operation and maintenance.  Paul Helser from Helser Woodland Management and Lee Beers of OSU Extension – thank you for a great afternoon session.  The other room explored solar as not only a green alternative option to conventional electricity but also as a way to get power into tough-to-reach areas of the woods.  Les Ober also shared a great talk on handling sap from the logical point of origin – the tree! – all the way to the evaporator.  This talk was similar to the panel session from the morning in that there was at least one tip or trick to be gleaned for even the most experienced maple producer in the room.

It would be crazy not to acknowledge the excellent menu presented by the Ashland University culinary team – from dark beer braised beef to maple candied brussel sprouts and a line-up of desserts to drool over, lunch remains a highlight of the overall Ohio Maple Days experience for all.  As much as we’ve come to count on delicious eats at the conference, we are also glad to offer free hydrometer testing as a mainstay of the event as well.  Almost 20% of attendees brought hydrometers to be tested with many producers bringing upwards of a half dozen instruments.

As a tip of the hat to the next generation, we also want to recognize Ms. Elizabeth Franz who came back to this year’s conference to present her research poster on nitrate and phosphate occurrence in maple syrup.  A big thanks to the maple producers who stepped up to the plate as collaborators in her work last year.  As great as events like Maple Days are, they won’t guarantee a vibrant future for the maple industry in Ohio, but continued involvement of and investment in the next generation will!

January Backyard Maple Workshop

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Please check out this January 24th workshop for Backyard Maple Production hosted by our very own Jake Nicholson and Jim Downs.  Beginning at 12:30 and running through the afternoon, attendees will be introduced to the backyard basics of tapping maple trees and boiling sap into delicious maple syrup.  The workshop will be hosted down at Canter’s Cave 4H Camp in Jackson County, Ohio.

Registration is required and attendees can sign up anytime from now until January 20th through the Woodland Stewards website.

 

We also wanted to share this Sustainability-focused survey for maple producers from the good folks at University of Vermont.  Please scan the QR code below to participate.

Here’s a bit more information from Mark Cannella.

Maple producers are invited to join a first-of-it’s kind study exploring the human side of maple production. This new survey asks producers to share their personal experiences and community interactions related to maple sap and syrup activity. It includes topics on community connections, trust, cultural significance, tradition, health and well being. 

This research is part of a larger project that is exploring all the ways that the maple sector represents or works towards “sustainability”. The larger project is identifying measurements that best reflect maple sustainability in relation to people, communities, forest health, economics and environmental impact. Once established, these sustainability indicators can be monitored over time to assess how the people and systems touched by maple are doing.

Registration is LIVE for Ohio Maple Days

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Friday December 6th we will be offering a Legacy Planning workshop on transition and estate planning featuring Ohio State University’s own David Marrison and Robert Moore.  While this workshop is a part of Ohio Maple Days, it is open to any landowner who wants to participate.  So please consider registering yourself, but also please share this great opportunity with family, friends, and neighbors regardless of whether they are a maple producer or not.  Registration is available here.

Saturday December 7th is a day for everything maple.  Topics this year include an expert panel on filtering, cost share programs, managing a timber sale, marketing for producers and a grading and tasting session to name a few.  Visit with vendors and enjoy a maple themed lunch.  It is always a grand time – Registration is available here.

Upcoming Events

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There’s an incoming wave of maple- and maple-adjacent events.

First up, Carri Jagger and and Kathy Smith are giving a seminar on hobby maple as part of Morrow County Extension’s programming next Saturday, July 6th at Lowe-Volk Park (2401 State Route 598) at 1 PM.  If you have access to a few maple trees, whether growing in your yard or in a woodland, you can produce your own maple syrup and perhaps even have enough to use as gifts for friends and family!

The following Friday, July 12th, we are excited to introduce a spiced up, live-from-the-field version of the annual Woodland, Water, and Wildlife Conference that is hosted in early March.  This July event is not replacing the normal WWW Conference by any means, but it is designed to be a complimentary field-based twist on the same great programming attendees have come to expect.  A full agenda is available online of the 12 different sessions of the day.  Register HERE.

Finally, the Ohio Maple Producers Association has helped to plan an exciting free family day at the OSU-Mansfield campus on Saturday, August 10th.  We will be giving sugarbush tours in the AM, leading different walks in the afternoon to other demonstration areas on campus, having maple treats and a food truck on site for lunchtime nourishment, and even showcasing some ambassador birds from the Ohio Bird Sanctuary and creepy crawlies from the OSU Bug Zoo.  As an added bonus, if you want to throw down your cash for a entry into our cribbage tournament, bring your A game early and enjoy some friendly competition with fellow attendees before the 3rd annual One Sweet Gathering event officially kicks off.  Don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions about this event or the others mentioned in this post.

An early Happy 4th of July to everyone!!

Maple as STEM – PAST Party

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We had an opportunity to table as an Experience Partner at the PAST Foundation‘s STEM of Spirits event this past Friday evening.  What a wonderful event and chance to showcase maple as a local food that supports local communities and is full of elegant and interesting science!

We chose a couple engaging angles to highlight the STEM of maple syrup to our guests.  Attendees learned about the differences in cancer fighting properties between early season Golden Delicate syrup as compared to later season Dark Robust profiles.  An informal poll of taste preference ended in a dead heat with the exact same number of people preferring Golden Delicate as Dark Robust.  Each syrup has its own medical benefits (Read more in our September ’23 Maple REVIEW article), and participants decided the only rationale response was to consume copious amounts of both!  Smart folks.

Another activity invited guests to use a sap hydrometer, digital refractometer, and traditional refractometer to calculate Brix of “sap” from 3 different maple trees.  One tree was a healthy full-crowned sugar maple.  The second was a stressed sugar maple.  A healthy “rilver” represented tree number 3.  A graduated cylinder varied sap output volume, and sap Brix varied by tree species and tree health.  A dry erase marker to record data on the tree canopies and some quick calculations to estimate final syrup output, and we transformed the evening’s guests into researchers.  The quick study’s results suggested that while maple species does matter, managing for healthy trees and forests is the highest priority for maple producers – regardless of maple species composition.

A bit of information about spotted lanternfly and some visuals to help showcase Jones Rule and the boiling process rounded out the display.  We’re excited to see Ohio State Maple continue to build momentum as we continue to expand our maple education and outreach footprint.

Maple Events on the Horizon

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Join Associate Professor, Dr. Stephen Matthews to learn about USDA Forest Service’s Climate Change Atlas.  He will introduce this tool that is based on over 2 decades of research with a goal to help us understand the impact of climate change on our trees. When you have heard us talk about red maple’s favorable position in the face of an uncertain future, the work of the Climate Change Atlas is what we are drawing from.  Register for the April 12th webinar HERE.

Future Generations University is offering a webinar this Thursday evening, March 21st at 7 PM.  The Appalachian-based program Out of the Woods hosts guest speaker Dr. Catherine Belisle (Cornell University) and Lindsay Kazarick (Future Generations University) to discuss maple confections and event-based marketing. REGISTER here.

Here’s a little bonus video to enjoy featuring Cornell University’s Arnot Teaching and Research Forest in New York.

SAVE THE DATE for 2024’s Ohio Maple Days – December 7.  We will be shifting locations this year due to a scheduling conflict at our normal venue at Ashland University.  You can look forward to this year’s Ohio Maple Days landing at Wooster’s Secrest Arboretum.

And speaking of events, we hope everyone got to participate in Ohio’s Maple Madness Tour.  Whether by opening up your own operation to visitors or by venturing out on the tour yourself, Maple Madness is a signature springtime event that should not be missed.  We hosted somewhere just shy of 100 folks throughout Saturday, March 2nd at the Ohio State Mansfield campus.  Thanks to all who came, and a BIG THANKS to everyone who led tours of the wetlands, sugarbush, and kept the evaporator steaming all day long.

 

Ohio Maple Day – Weekend Recap

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Ohio Maple Days was a great success again this early December with a wonderful slate of speakers and solid growth over last year’s attendance.  But before we get to Saturday’s main event, there was a lot of excitement that cannot be overlooked from that Friday.

On Friday afternoon, over 30 people participated in an exceptional value-added maple products workshop in Ashland University’s state-of-the-art teaching kitchen.  Several maple producers – namely Galen Smith, Dan Brown, Jen Freeman, and Fred Ahrens – demonstrated how to make delicious (and yes there was PLENTY of taste testing!) maple candy, maple cream, maple sugar, and maple cotton candy.  Contributions from numerous others behind the scenes must be acknowledged, and I even got to participate by contributing a maple venison breakfast sausage link exhibition at the end.  All participants left full of good bites to eat and full of knowledge, tips and tricks to either get into the value-added products game or improve their already developed skill set.  It is always so much fun to participate in a workshop where the speakers, as well as many of the attendees, are interacting back-and-forth with one another from beginning to end.

Friday evening’s main event was spearheaded by the Ohio Maple Producer’s Association – “One Sweet Gathering.”  Raffles and trivia night carried the audience through lots of maple-themed questions and more participants than not left with one or multiple prizes.  This event has become one of my favorite as it affords us an opportunity to interact with everyone in a low stakes environment – there is no agenda that has to be accomplished, no itinerary that is dependent on staying on time.  Lots of great conversation, laughs, and of course excellent food and drinks carried the night, and OMPA was able to raise a substantial sum for the OSU maple research program – an extremely generous gesture to push for more and better work on their behalf!  Thanks!!

For Saturday’s main event, Aaron Wilson – Buckeye Universe’s State Climatologist – keynoted with an excellent hour-long talk discussing the implications of El Nino’s resurgence on sugarmakers.  Regulatory updates and labeling requirements from Ohio Dept. of Agriculture, the latest on spotted lanternfly, and a primer on tubing and vacuum systems from Mike Lynch of CDL rounded out the morning’s agenda.

The chefs at Ashland University continue to outdo themselves and offered up yet another showstopper of a lunch.  As entrees and desserts were enjoyed, Roger & Suzie Gortner and Paul Snavely from the Snavely Sugar Shack were overwhelmed by congratulations on receiving the Charles Keiter Award.

Saturday afternoon offered a split agenda with a Beginner or Advanced track.  Spot checking attendance in each, most talks were roughly half and half throughout the final sessions.  One highlight for us was sharing the Sugarhouse Videos created at Gingerich Brothers & Sperry LLC, Seldom Seen Farms, and Double G Maple.  Those short videos will be featured in the digital Maple Toolbox which is almost completed and will be available soon.  Other Advanced talks focused on NRCS cost-share programs for enhanced sugarmaking sustainability, crop tree management in a sugarbush, and coupling gourmet mushroom cultivation with your maple woods.  The Beginner track started in the obvious place – how to identify different maple species, and it then progressed through different sap collection methods, a crash course on evaporators and reverse osmosis, before concluding with economic and enterprise planning.

Last but certainly not least, I have to give a shout out to Galen Smith for leading a team of folks to host the John Berry Memorial Syrup Contest.  Bruce Kavanagh took first in the Delicate class, Goodell Family Farms for Amber, and Aggie from Gingerich Brothers & Sperry led the Robust class.  The Dick Schoor Award for best syrup from a new or small producer was awarded to Bruce Kavanagh, and the Hilton Farly Award was won by Aggie Sperry.

We hope you can join us next year (actually this year…Happy New Year!) on December 6 for the 2024 edition of Ohio Maple Days!  SAVE THE DATE!!

Ask Santa for a New…Hydrometer!!

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This year’s Ohio Maple Days welcomed back the free hydrometer testing service that folks had come to expect from Dr. Gary Graham’s days of leading the annual Ohio maple event.

As part of the tri-state (OH – WV – PA) ACER grant, we built out at least 1 full hydrometer testing kit for each state to ensure accurate hydrometers are in the hands of maple producers in order to produce top-quality maple syrup.  A big thanks to Carri Jagger for leading the charge on this initiative, we figured that she and I tested somewhere in the neighborhood of 75-90 hydrometers during Saturday’s program.  These are rough estimates, but I would guess around half the hydrometers tested within +/- 0.2 Brix of perfect.  1 out of every 10 hydrometers read heavier densities than they should have, and the remainder – close to 3 or 4 out of every 10 – read light compared to the standard.

For a bit more complete explanation and how to make sense of the Hydrometer Testing Bookmarks, let’s explore a couple scenarios.

The first scenario is that your hydrometer reads the exact same as our standard testing hydrometer.  This bookmark shows a best case scenario and this is exactly what that means.  We chose to test everyone’s hydrometer against a test solution of 60.0 Brix.  In other words, we mixed a test solution to read 60.0 Brix on our standard hydrometer and checked everyone else’s instrument against the truth of that standard.  Choosing 60.0 Brix as the test line is somewhat arbitrary, we could have chosen 62.0 or 64.0 or 65.7 if we were really feeling inspired.  The bottom line is that within a certain range, an inch is an inch, and if your ruler is really truly measuring 24″ where it says 24″, the same ruler should also be spot on when measuring something 30″ long as well.  The same concept applies here.  Known density is 60.0, your hydrometer reads 60.0, and your glass, paper scale, and hydrometer is in great condition.

Heavy Syrup LLC and Wimpy Syrup & Co. are both less than ideal hydrometer testing scenarios.

Wimpy Syrup & Co.’s hydrometer is reading heavy even though their hydrometer is in good condition from a wear and tear perspective.  The effect of having a hydrometer that reads heavy is that you’ll likely be producing syrup on the underside of optimal density.  In other words, you’ll pull your syrup off early because of the heavy reading and may not finish all the way up at the perfection standard of 66.9 Brix.

Heavy Syrup LLC has the opposite issue.  Because their hydrometer is reading light, syrup will probably get left on the evaporator a tad long and finish at a higher density than the industry standard.  Hence, we can see that the directional error in hydrometer reading leads to syrup that finishes in the opposite direction.  A heavier reading than truth leads to lighter syrup. Lighter readings lead to heavier syrup.  The additional issue with Heavy Syrup LLC’s hydrometer is that the paper scale has become twisted, likely as a result of a glue dot detaching, eliminating any hope of accurate density readings in the future.  Throw that hydrometer away.

Hopefully this post sheds some light on why hydrometer testing is important.  A big thanks to all the producers who brought one or two or five hydrometers to be tested.  We will plan to offer the same service at Ohio Maple Days going forward and add a second testing beaker for sap hydrometers at next year’s event.  Syrup density is one of the key diagnostics to ensure we produce quality maple syrup and accurately reading density is an important skill as a sugarmaker.  If you have a hydrometer that you know is off, toss it in the garbage and ask Santa to put another in your stocking ASAP.

 

Lake Erie Maple Expo RECAP

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Guest post by Carri Jagger, a MUCH appreciated piece of the Ohio State Maple puzzle!

On November 10th and 11th the Pennsylvania Maple Producers Association and the Northwestern FFA hosted the 2023 Lake Erie Maple Expo in Albion PA.  The Expo kicked off on Friday morning with a variety of sessions from beginning maple production, confections, and value-added products to tubing installation and vacuum.

I had the opportunity to attend the Advanced Tubing and Installation workshop on Friday that was taught by Steve Childs, retired maple specialist from Cornell University.  Steve taught us how to use the basal area angle gauge to estimate the potential number of taps per acre.

Steve also taught about evaluating your current maple tubing system to make sure that it is operating as efficiently as possible.  He shared the Cornell Maple Tubing and Vacuum System Notebook with the class.  You can view and print the notebook from the Cornell Maple Program Notebook Series Website.

On Saturday the conference resumed at the Albion High School where there were 4 concurrent sessions that covered 30 different topics.  I took the opportunity to attend the maple value-added track where I learned about using a glucose meter to check the invert sugar levels in maple syrup.  Determining invert sugar levels are important if you are planning on using your maple syrup for maple candy, sugar, cream and other confections.  If you would like to learn more about making maple confections check out the Cornell Maple Confections Notebook offered at the website above.

I also attended sessions about the distillation of maple and making beverages with maple.  Michigan State and Cornell are both doing extensive research about using late season maple and off flavor maple to distill into a marketable product.  Cornell has created recipes for several maple beverages and those can be found at the Cornell new product development site.

In addition to the conference there was also a trade show to visit with vendors about new and existing maple syrup equipment.  The conference was a great learning opportunity for both new and seasoned maple syrup producers.  The Lake Erie Maple Expo is always the second weekend in November and I encourage you to attend.