A sweet maple tour opens the season

Taking a close look: Although maple-sugaring is now a high-tech industry, complete with plastic vacuum tubing running through the woods, the old-fashioned maple bucket still intrigues.

HILLTOWNS — Several hundred cars will pass through the Hilltowns in the next two weekends, searching for a taste of locally made maple syrup and a look at its life before the bottle.

The Hilltowns Maple Weekend is a series of events in Berne and Knox celebrating the season of the syrup, which begins running in the form of sap in Maple trees this time of year. It is boiled down to quantities in New York that put the state in second place behind Vermont for maple syrup production last year.

Syrup producers will open their properties on March 21, 22, 28, and 29 for touring children and adults, and their mornings will be filled with a pancake breakfast every Saturday and Sunday.

On this Saturday, the Helderberg Hilltowns Association is hosting its annual Sap Run, a five-kilometer race, and the local Kiwanis club will have its annual pancake breakfast, which includes crafts, a bake sale, pony rides, antique cars, and an egg hunt, on Sunday, March 29.

“The biggest thing you can expect is the weather’s just not going to cooperate,” said Randy Grippin of Mountain Winds Farms, which is open for tours at 12 Williamson Road from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on all four days. “They need to dress for the occasion, because you may be running knee deep in mud, or the snow.”

Grippin is the Catskill regional coordinator for the New York Sate’s Maple Weekends. Producers from acress the state will participate in the events run by the New York State Maple Producers Association, a not-for-profit group of more than 500 entrepreneure.

Locally, other maple producers will carry on their tours over the same two weekends.

This includes Malachi Farms at 2548 Berne-Altamont Road and Lounsbury Farms at 138 Cross Road, both from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on March 29.

This will be the maple producers’ 20th annual Maple weekend, celebrated throughout the state.

Grippin said people generally want to know more about where their food comes from, and it’s a way to get outside as the seasons turn.

A frequent misconception, Grippin says, is that the syrup comes out of the trees in its tan and sweet form.

The colorless sap from the maple tree is collected from 1,800 taps on about 100 acres on Grippin’s farm and boiled over a wood-fed fire until upwards of 40 gallons of sap becomes a gallon of syrup. He added a reverse-osmosis machine this year that will remove 80 percent of the water before the sap is heated, taking away several hours and cords of wood from the process.

And it’s a demanding process.

“We run like hell for, hopefully, six or eight weeks, if the weather’s good,” said Grippin. It’s a year-round job, and Grippin does it by himself for most of the year.

Like any agriculture, the success of a maple syrup production depends on the weather. So far, Grippin says, just three days of warmer temperatures have been good for sap runs. In a good year, he makes 500 gallons of syrup.

A large margin for Grippin’s business comes from the maple products, like sauces made elsewhere, maple sugar, and maple cream — a further condensed version of maple syrup that reaches a consistency that can be spread on toast or salmon before being grilled. New to Grippin’s farm is Vertical Water, unconcentrated maple sap packaged in Buffalo and sold as a specialty drink like coconut water.

When it comes in liter form, Grippin said, he will try using the sap in a stew. He said Native Americans supposedly first used maple sap to cook with.

At 58, Grippin lives in the farmhouse where he grew up, tapping maple trees on the property to make syrup with his family. He has worked in retail for most of his career. He sold cars and heavy equipment parts, and at one time worked for a tree-cutting company.

Nine years ago, he saw an ad for 50 pails and an outdoor cooking pan in the The Enterprise.

“So I decided we’d do it to show my kids what it was all about, and it just kind of got out of hand,” said Grippin.

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The Sap Run will start at the Knox Town Hall at 10 a.m. on Saturday, March 21.

The local pancake breakfasts will be held on Saturday, March 21, at the First Reformed Church of Berne, 1664 Helderberg Trail in Berne, from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.; Sunday, March 22, at the Berne Masonic Lodge, at 1652 Helderberg Trail in Berne, to benefit Girl Scouts; Saturday, March 28, at the Helderberg Lutheran Evangelical Church, at 1728 Helderberg Trail, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.; and on Sunday, March 29, at the Knox firehouse, at 2198 Berne-Altamont Road, from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

For more information, go to hilltowns.org/maple-weekend.html.

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