Sweet Traditions

A northeast Iowa family harvests sap to produce maple candy and syrup

By Joseph L. Murphy

The clap of hooves echo through the tree-covered bluffs near Castalia as horse-drawn wagons transport volunteers through a fresh blanket of snow. Helping hands move sap from bucket to bucket collecting the raw, time-tested commodity.

The overnight freeze and thaw cycles of early March are a telltale sign that it is syrup time again. For hundreds of years, the Green family and their descendants have collected and boiled sap to prepare nature’s sweet candy and syrup.

“The fluctuation in temperature is what makes the sap run,” Dale Green says. “We’re catching the sap as it runs up and down the tree.”

Green and his daughter Jeni (Green) Melcher are the most recent generations to make sugar, also known as maple candy, and syrup with the help of other family members, friends and volunteers.

Steel buckets line maple trees in the bluffs surrounding Castalia. The Green family has been collecting sap using old-fashioned horsepower and making syrup much the same way for 169 years.

Jeni (Green) Melcher makes maple candy while others monitor syrup progress.

Meghan Palmer pours sap into the collection wagon.

Hall Everman drives the horse team.

Greens’ Sugar Bush is the family’s tradition of turning sap into sweet gold. Started in 1851, their operation is one of the state’s longest-running businesses.

“We are as old-fashioned and traditional as you can get,” Green says. “We cook sap over a wood fire and make sugar from a hand-hammered copper pot that is more than 60 years old.”

Not much has changed since syrup was first made in the maple-tree-lined hills and hallows of northeast Iowa. Horse teams pulling a large covered tank collect sap from 1,100 spiles (taps) each year. The tanks are emptied into two underground 1,250-gallon cisterns, where sap is drawn by gravity to the evaporator.

The evaporator is fueled by wood and stoked by volunteers. It heats syrup to 7 degrees above the boiling point of water, releasing water in the form of steam. Stainless steel pans sit on an arch above an intense fire, and as the water evaporates, the sap thickens.

“We have limestone-based soils here, so we use a filter press to remove the lime,” Melcher says. “It doesn’t hurt anything, but if it isn’t filtered, it will settle to the bottom of the bottle.”

It takes roughly 43-45 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup.

“Making syrup is watching a lot of thermometers and knowing when to stop before it boils over,” Melcher says. “At the beginning of the season, you have nice light syrup. The color and the taste of the syrup will change throughout the season.”

Sap gathering usually lasts four to six weeks, depending on the weather. Throughout the season, the Greens and volunteers gather buckets 5-25 times, depending on the freeze and thaw cycles.

“We only sell the sugar during the season because we don't put any preservatives in it. But we sell our syrup year-round at our farm in Castalia,” Melcher explains. The Greens also own Spring Valley Farms, a commercial seed stock cattle business. Through the family-owned company, they sell Angus and Simmental bulls along with herd sires.

Since 1991, the family has hosted Maple Festival Days to thank their customers and friends. Visitors can enjoy a pancake and sausage meal, free wagon rides through the timber and tours of the syrupmaking process.

“Maple Festival Days started as a way to say thank you for our livestock business,” Green says. “Now the festival is open to everyone. Every year at the event, we feed 1,200 people from six different states.”

The Green family has been making maple candy and syrup for hundreds of years.

A NORTHEAST IOWA FAMILY HARVESTS SAP TO PRODUCE MAPLE CANDY AND SYRUP