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By Bill Van Tassel
AUBURN — Maine Maple Sunday just finished its 35th year of open houses at dozens of syrup-producing farms and sugar shacks. The event is organized by the Maine Maple Producers Association and features nearly 100 locations, where visitors can learn how the syrup is made as well as purchase the finished product in one of its many forms — syrup, hard candies, ice cream, cotton candy or drizzled popcorn.
With names from the French “Cabane a Sucre Bergeron” (Bergeron’s Sugar Shack) in Hebron to Rural Pride near Caribou, from Wells to Eagle Lake, from the small [registered] hobbyist to the large producer, the last weekend in March finds many Maine families searching out the sweet stuff.
The open houses on Saturday and Sunday, March 24 and 25, had wonderful weather, and the sap was running still.
Although small operations may still use wood-fired evaporation pans, modern sugar shacks usually employ multi-chambered, temperature-controlled pans and systems, along with hydrometers and ancillary tools of the trade.
Similar results can be achieved with either method at the hands of an expert, with the end product being a dark, rich syrup or a delicate pale gold.
(Before the arrival of Europeans, the Native Americans boiled the sap by dropping heated stones into large wooden containers holding the tapped liquid of the Sugar Maple tree.
The Maine Maple Syrup Producers website lists the trace minerals in natural Maple syrup as manganese (33 percent), zinc, calcium, potassium, iron and magnesium. The site also talks about some of the benefits of using natural sugars like maple, honey and agave, above the usual refined white staple from sugar cane. Maple syrup and the others can be used with great benefits as alternatives to the usual item many of us use; according to experts, it’s also healthier than artificial sweeteners so popular today.
Benefits include the many antioxidant actions from certain phytochemicals like Rutin and Quercetin and bioflavonoids.
Along with a good diet, the ingredients of natural maple syrup have anti-inflammatory properties, and others can be beneficial to digestion as they act as pro- and pre-biotics in recovering gut flora. Other research has been done in conjunction with certain antibiotics and has shown extracts from the syrup can enhance the effect of medicine in fighting bacterial cells.
TOP PHOTO: Dana Coffin, of Auburn, pours some fresh syrup on his son John’s pancakes at Wrinkle in Thyme Farm in Sumner on Maine Maple Sunday, March 25. Coffin’s wife Caroline, right, is related to the farm’s co-owner, Marty Elkin, and they visit the Sumner farm for breakfast every year on Maine Maple Sunday. (Bill Van Tassel Photo)
