Liquid gold: a pot of boiling syrup. (Photos by Lisa Aciukewicz)

Sugaring in Harvard this year is tracking the weather. The warm days before the storm March 16 meant fast-running sap and sugar fires burning at the Burnses’ sugarhouse on Ayer Road and in a few Harvard backyards. Cold and snow then slowed the flow and the fires.

 Jim Burns started his small-scale commercial maple syrup production behind his family’s Ayer Road home when they moved to Harvard 10 years ago. Tapping his own trees and others around town, he hopes to match the 50 gallons produced last year. It takes 40 gallons of sap to produce one gallon of syrup. After sugaring season, Burns sells his syrup directly by phone request and, in the fall, at Doe Orchards.

Shaker Road resident Karl Nocka usually produces enough for his family and extended family’s year-round use from the nearby sugar maples planted by Elijah Myrick in the mid-1800s. Nocka sugars with a second-hand, wood-fired, two-foot by three-foot evaporator.

Three newcomers to sugaring are learning together this year via email conversations and a shared backyard setup. Jacob Gates Road resident Rick Wood pulled an old wood stove from his basement to his backyard after tales of peeling wallpaper cautioned him against evaporating indoors, a process that takes many hours. Marilyn Strong added sap from her own trees to Wood’s.

Oak Hill resident Eric Broadbent boiled his sap on the kitchen stove (they don’t have wallpaper) and learned that the difference between syrup and sugar is all too close. According to Wood, “The grail of sugaring is to get the desired thickness just before it turns to thick burned sugar, which can happen in a matter of seconds.”

 

Karl Nocka feeds the fire under his evaporating pan.		Gwyneth Burns gets a little help from her dad as she drills a hole for a tap.

Jim Burns feeds the fire in his sugar house.

Jim Burns uses a hydrometer to test the density of his syrup. Syrup that is too thin is more likely to spoil and will be weak flavored.  Syrup that is too dense can crystalize.		Eli Wood pours sap into a pan on an outdoor stove set up for sap boiling.

Jim Burns pours fresh syrup in a spoon for David Cooke to sample.		Twenty-two-month-old Harry Burns entertains himself on a tractor at Bob Moran’s while his dad checks his sap buckets.