Local maple sugarers tapping trees and boiling as season kicks off

As the weather slowly warms up, so do maple syrup evaporators around Franklin County and the North Quabbin region as maple season kicks off.

In Royalston, Tom LeRay, the owner of Sweet Water Sugar House, said his business is off to a slower start because he needed to upgrade more than 4,000 feet of 1-inch main line.

“We’re actually going to be tapping this weekend,” he said Friday afternoon. “We’re still on time. … The ground is still frozen and that’s what you want.”

In typical New England fashion, LeRay said the weather is “looking good,” but just last week it “wasn’t looking good.” He added he is hopeful to have a productive season at the sugar house, which is located at 56 Brown Road in Royalston.

“I’m going to say we’re probably going to have a good season,” LeRay said. “I could be wrong, but we always hope for a good season.”

In his sugar shack across the street from the Conway Grammar School Saturday afternoon, Howard Boyden, along with his brother and son, sit in the steam-filled backroom at Boyden Brothers Maple, boiling Thursday night’s sap collection.

“I like to do 100 gallons a day to be efficient,” Boyden said in between moving buckets of fresh, warm maple syrup. “Today, it’ll be around 40 gallons.”

Boyden said conditions have been “OK” for collecting sap, but the deep freezes that have been happening each night can often slow down tree collection. He said, however, this is to be expected in February and he has reached close to 20% of his yearly production already.

“You’re dealing with Mother Nature,” Boyden said. “She’s a little moody.”

The syrup being produced Saturday was considered “extremely-high amber” and is typical for early in the season. Boyden and his wife, Jeanne, who helps operate the store, bottle syrup and bake maple candy, said the syrup gradually turns darker as the weather heats up and the chemical composition changes into a higher concentration of simple sugars like fructose.

Running about 3,500 taps spread out across southern Conway, Boyden referred to the people who let him tap their trees as “shareholders.” He provides them with syrup for their troubles.

In the store portion of the sugar house, syrup was being bottled and free samples of the day’s product were being handed out to patrons. Boyden Brothers Maple sells products at the shack at 642 South Deerfield Road and delivers its products to several area stores like Apex Orchards in Shelburne.

A third-generation sugarer and working in the same shack his grandfather put up in 1966, Boyden said, “I pretty much can’t help myself.”

Across the region, other sugarers are also kicking operations into gear. In Montague, Gary Billings and his team have had a “pretty good run of sap in this first little run” for Ripley Farm.

Billings said the weather seems like it may extend the season a little bit because the frost has “driven very deep into the ground” and recent temperatures have made tree sap “run like crazy.”

Operating approximately 2,700 taps, Billings said Ripley Farm aims to make between 300 and 400 gallons of syrup, but previous years have fallen short of that mark.

“We haven’t had one of those years for the last couple of them,” Billings said. “The weather was pretty bad. … It warmed up and stayed warm; you need the contrast of the warm and the cold.”

One small issue, however, is that Billings said he cannot find additional syrup jugs.

“I didn’t anticipate this type of shortage,” he said. “You can make all the syrup you want, but if you don’t have a jug to put it in, you can’t sell it.”

In Shelburne, the Davenport Maple Farm Restaurant, located at 111 Tower Road, opened its doors for the season Saturday and will remain open each weekend from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. until April 3. Likewise, Williams Farm Sugarhouse at 491 Greenfield Road in Deerfield will open March 5, operating from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, according to the business’ website.

Lisa Davenport, who co-owns Davenport Maple Farm Restaurant with her husband, said Friday afternoon that things have been “chaotic and exciting” as the business prepared for opening day.

“We’re hoping for a little more normalcy this year, restaurant wise,” Davenport said. “The last two have been limited.”

Davenport said the restaurant will serve 300 people per day on a “really good day.”

As for the farm itself, Davenport said staff started tapping “this week and we did get a bit of a run,” and they expected to be boiling Saturday.

“I’m optimistic,” she said. “It all depends on the weather. It could easily go either way.”

Chris Larabee can be reached at clarabee@recorder.com or 413-930-4081.