Pure Maple Syrup

Once again, the sideways economics of small time sugarin' kept us from tapping this season; thus we will have no local Pure Maple Syrup for the foreseeable future. If and when this changes look for us at the Shepherdstown Farm Market.

Mountain State Maple produces - and takes its name from - 100% Pure Maple Syrup products. Our Maple Syrup is so local that chances are if you purchase some at the Farm Market in Shepherdstown (the only place we sell it) you will be standing less than a mile or two from the trees that produced the sap AND the wood-fired arch over which that sap was "cooked down." We proudly display the West Virginia Department of Agriculture's "West Virginia Grown" logo on every bottle.

So, how did Shepherdstown and Pure Maple Syrup come to be used in the same sentence?

A few years ago some Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers (yes, they exist) turned us on to the fact that the original owners of our home had the foresight and good taste to plant four Sugar Maples out front. I became a hobby syrup maker immediately and have shared my small output with family and friends ever since. Now, it turns out that there are other, larger stands of Sugar Maples in the area (it's the State Tree fer cryin' out loud) and by virtue of the generosity of the owners of some of those trees Mountain State Maple is happily in the sugarin' business. Our output for 2008 was quite small - we hadn't contemplated expanding into larger production till just recently - and if you blinked at the Farm Markets, where it is exclusively available, you probably missed it. In 2009 we did much better, selling syrup (albeit in small quantities) throughout the summer, and in 2010 we were able to add pints and quarts to our repertoire In the meantime, our little maple syrup recipe book has sold well, and as we plan the next edition - with more recipes and expanded information on West Virginia maple sugaring - is now for sale through Tamarack as well as O Hurley's General Store, in Shepherdstown. The book features more than 110 recipes with all sorts of maple information, photos and drawings, all bound and set forth on heavy paper. We think it might make a nice gift to go along with a bottle of syrup.

Meantime, see our newest photos below...

Some quick maple syrup facts:

1. While most members of the Maple Family may be tapped and will produce sweet syrup, the Sugar, or Rock Maple is by far the cream of the crop. We also tap some Black maples, considered virtually indistinguishable from the Sugar by many producers, and plan to mix in a small percentage of the more common Red Maple as our number of taps increases.

2. It takes approximately 40 gallons of sap to yield a single gallon of maple syrup. Indeed, sap is the ONLY ingredient, but you have to boil away an awful lot of water to get to syrup, the main reason the price for the real stuff is so high that some old hands refer to it as "liquid gold."

3. Tapping season here in Shepherdstown typically begins in early February and continues through mid-March or so. It all depends on the weather; the sap runs when the nights are cold (below freezing) but the daytime temps get higher. Taps can be homemade (Native Americans, who have been doing this a long, long time, would simply slash open the tree) or commercially obtained.

4. Tapping a mature tree does not harm in it in any way. It should go without saying that tapping an immature tree is wrong and should not be done...

(see http://www.cafepress.com/thespankdmonkey for this design in shirts and other products)

5. Syrup comes in different Grades, most easily identified by its color. The photo above and those below show different grades that we have produced, namely Grade A Fancy and Amber, and some Grade B, which is darker. The fancy stuff is lighter and sweeter in taste, and makes really fine maple syrup candy, which we will sell beginning in 2009, while the darker syrup has a more robust, maply flavor. Generally speaking two main factors in what kind of syrup a tree will produce are the characteristics of the tree itself and when in the tapping season the sap was collected - the syrup will darken as the end of the tapping season approaches.

We'll have more to say about things like how to make maple syrup, recipes for cooking with it, etc. For now, enjoy some images depicting the sugarin' process from our Sugar Maple gallery (* denotes photos courtesy of professional photographer and good friend Joe Jardeleza)

This what the bud/fruit of a healthy Black Maple looks like in early April: