HEREABOUTS beth anspach
For the past seven years, Ron Burnside has been known as the Maple Syrup King at Aullwood Farm in Butler Twp. “I got started volunteering at Aullwood when a friend invited me,” Burnside said. “I got interested in working with the maple syrup process and have been doing that ever since.”
And every year about this time, volunteers and staff at Aullwood are gearing up for process of harvesting the sap the makes the syrup from the approximately 55 sugar maple trees on the farm.
“We usually wait until the end of January to start to tap the trees,” Burnside said. “We wait until the temperatures are just right — days into the high 40’s and nights that are above freezing.”
And after all these years, Burnside knows his “Sugarbush” collection of trees. “It all depends on the seasons we’ve had before,” he said. A dry summer may make it a tough year for the sap and many other factors affect the trees. “You always hope for a good flow and we can collect as many as 60 gallons a day or maybe even 100.”
Burnside has worked tirelessly at this volunteer job for years because he enjoys it and because he knows few others really want to do this job, which can be tedious. “Once you collect the sap, it has to be boiled because it’s nearly 90 percent water,” Burnside said. “That’s a long and boring job.”
Aullwood is preparing for its annual Sugarbush sap harvesting and is hosting a “Magic of Sugar Maple Season” Farm Walk on Jan. 16 that includes a behind the scenes look at what it takes the farmers to prepare for the season.
“Visitors are going to discover how trees are tapped how the sap buckets are hung and how we set up the evaporator in the sugar house,” said Nina Lapitan, the volunteer coordinator at Aullwood. “This family program will include a story about maple syrup at the end of the tour.”
Burnside’s duties will pick up in February when the sap starts running. “Our final product ends up being only 33 percent water and 67 percent sucrose so we boil off a lot of water,” Burnside said. “This is why it takes almost 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup.”
Aullwood invites school groups to visit through the week in February to learn about the maple syrup process and is open to the public on the weekends. And on many of those days, folks will likely spot Burnside, stirring the evaporator or checking a sap bucket.
He clocked close to 150 volunteer hours for Aullwood in 2010 and though he says he is slowing down, Lapitan describes him as one of her most “talented and flexible” volunteers.
And though he and his wife both help with other Aullwood special events, he likes the maple syrup process for the lessons it teaches.
“A lot of things you see on the table for consumption with a meal are just taken for granted,” Burnside said. “I think it’s important for children and adults to learn that there are some pretty elaborate processes behind that little jug that is on your table.”
For more about Aullwood, call (937) 890-7360.
Contact this columnist at (937) 475-8212 or banspach@woh.rr.com.
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