Willow Oaks Craft Cider and Fox Haven will host tree-tapping demos

BY SHUAN BUTCHER Special to The News-Post

For Taylor Roman, the idea of tapping sugar maple and walnut trees came naturally. As a teacher at Fox Haven Organic Farm and Learning Center in Jefferson, he is always looking for new ways to engage with the land we live on, particularly yearround.

“I have been obsessed with nature and the outdoors all my life,” said the UMBC graduate, who started working on farms while still in high school.

Roman reached out to Eric Rice, who owns and runs Country Pleasures Farm and Willow Oaks Craft Cider with his wife.

“I’ve been interested in what the two of them have done with their food production,” Roman said.

For fun, Roman and Rice started tapping maple and sugar trees together and realized they could make a nice product from their work. Mature walnut trees grow throughout the Catoctin Creek Valley, Roman said, so they started tapping the trees at Fox Haven. Sugar maple trees are located on the Country Pleasures Farm property, which were planted years ago by the Rice family with the intent to tap them.

They started tapping a few weeks ago.

“There is a certain timeframe,” Roman said. “The trees are waking up,” Roman said.

When the temperature is just above freezing but not warmer than 45 degrees is the ideal timeframe. The sap is moving up the tree during the day and at night goes back down to the roots, so tapping the tree during the natural ebb and flow is really just releasing the pressure of the sap. If it is done incorrectly or at the wrong time, bacteria can set in and attack the sugar.

When embarking on a project like this, it is also necessary to pay attention to nature. Roman was going to delay the tapping process by a few days based on his own calculations that take into account weather conditions and the environment but noticed the sapsucker woodpecker had started to do so. Tapping

“requires you to be aware and mindful of what is going on,” he said.

Technically, you can tap any tree, according to Roman. But maple trees have a higher concentration in sap, and sugar maples have the highest concentration of the maple trees, hence their name. Walnut trees are lower in sugar, but enough to get a nice, sweet syrup. “Also, a nutty flavor come through so you get a nuttiness and smokiness to it,” Roman said.

For the first time, Roman will offer a free maple and walnut sugaring demo to the public at Willow Oaks Craft Cider and Wine in Middletown over the next two weekends. Visitors can learn firsthand how sap is turned into syrup during demonstrations. Plenty of seating, indoors and outside, will be available. Drinks will be available, too, though food options will be limited, so participants are encouraged to bring a picnic. The property is also petfriendly, as long as pets are on a leash.

Roman will be stationed outside the tasting room, cooking down all the sap they have collected.

“It takes time to evaporate the water,” he explained. “It will take days.”

While demonstrating the process, Roman will engage with visitors and explain what is happening, how things

‘TIS THE SEASON

FROM SAP TO SYRUP with tree-tapping demos: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. March 18, 19, 25 and 26 at Willow Oaks Craft Cider and Wine, 629 Harley Road, Middletown. Free. Learn more at foxhavenfarm.org.

MAPLE SYRUP FESTIVAL: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. March 18 and 19 at the William Houck Area of Cunningham Falls State Park at 14039 Catoctin Hollow Road, Thurmont. Watch sugar-makers demonstrate the traditional way of boiling sap into syrup. $5 donation per person. Live bluegrass music and other activities are part of the festival. Learn more at frederickcountymd. gov/calendar.

work and why the process is done a certain way. He will also be keeping the fire, making sure the water is cooked off but not so fast that it burns.

Pre-orders for the final product are closed for now, but they may have excess product to sell once they know they can fill the orders already received. It depends on how much sap is obtained and how much syrup they can get from it. Last year, for example, Roman said it took 66 gallons of

Cooking sap into syrup

walnut sap to produce one gallon of syrup. For the sugar maple trees, the ratio was about 40 gallons of sap to one gallon of syrup produced.

“There’s nothing better than food that you grow or make,” Roman said. “This is a unique, good quality local flavor.”

Shuan Butcher is a writer, nonprofit professional, event planner and avid traveler. He writes from Frederick.