‘Pure gold’

Steam rose from a vat of maple sap, filling the tent with a smoky, sweet vapor that spilled out into the open air behind the Hinkle-Garton farmstead.

Bob Nowling, a volunteer at the Indiana Maple Syrup Weekend on March 8 in Bloomington, kept an eye on the boiling liquid. The sap needed to go from a 2% sugar content to 66%.

“Right now, he's got raw sap heating up and going to a point to where it boils,” Nowling said, referring to Michael Bell, the man in charge of Hinkle-Garton's syrup-making operation. “And then eventually it will boil and boil and boil until it concentrates, gets all the water out of the sap, or most of the water out of the sap. And what you have left is pure gold. It's maple syrup, the best you can possibly eat.”

The Hoosier state is no stranger to maple products. Up until the late 19th century, people would boil maple sap down into sugar cakes to facilitate transportation, Bell said. The cakes were solid blocks of maple sugar that would last longer than sap, according to the Indiana Maple Syrup Association website.

The IMSA website also reported that in 1840, Indiana farmers produced almost four times as much maple syrup — when sugar cake volume is converted to gallons — as Vermont did in 2020. Vermont is the current largest producer of maple syrup in the United States.

Though Indiana doesn’t produce as much maple syrup as it used to, there are still around 170 producers of various sizes in the IMSA. The association provides resources for syrup makers, including information about equipment, syrup grades and caring for maple trees.

The IMSA promotes the yearly Indiana Maple Syrup Weekend, which began in 2015. Doug Mark, the public relations officer for the IMSA and a third-generation syrup-producer, said the festival is a chance to raise awareness of maple syrup’s continuing legacy in the Hoosier state.

“A lot of people aren't aware that maple syrup is produced in Indiana at all,” Mark said. “And so, it's a chance for people to get out and find out about something that's, you know, historically happened in Indiana for a long time, but a lot of people still aren't aware of.”

Bell brought up maple syrup’s wartime history in the United States. He’s heard stories of families restarting syrup production because of World War II sugar rationing.

The Japanese invasion of the Philippines and German U-Boat attacks limited the U.S’ ability to import sugar, and the government rationed it, a National Parks Service blog explained.

“And then the other cool thing to me was that prior to the Civil War, if you were in the North, making your own sugar meant that you weren't getting sugar from the backs of slaves,” Bell said. “So that was very much a a political statement.”

Maple Syrup Weekend events took place all over Indiana this year, from Bloomington to Nappanee . Mark said that 12 sugar camps participated this year, with activities like tours and pancake eating. Sugar camps are locations where maple syrup is produced.

At the Hinkle-Garton farmstead on 10th Street, Bell sold maple syrup, cookies, cream, candy and sugar, as well as recipe books and make-your-own maple syrup guides.

Visitors could also see Bell and Nowling making syrup and smell the sweet aroma of boiling sap. Samples of both were available.

Bell began making maple syrup 15 years ago, and like Nowling, keeps coming back to maple syrup production because of the smell. It makes all the effort worth it, he said.

And much effort is required; Bell said it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup. This involves two trees, each with two to three sap taps, each tap generally yielding one quart of finished syrup.

The cold temperatures Bloomington experienced this winter provided the conditions that maple trees need to start the year’s sap run.

“You know, the sap has to have a kind of a mechanical or a hydraulic reason to rise up into the tree,” Bell said. “So, when you get a freeze, there are gas chambers in the twigs, and as that gas contracts it's drawing the sap up out of the ground into the tree. So, then you kind of freeze overnight, everything stops. And then the next day, when you get the thaw, the sap runs back into your bags.”

Syrup season is only about a month and a half long, Bell said. The exact timeframe is determined by the weather and can change from year to year. Bell said that it’s unusual for him to still have sap to boil in early March.

“Once you drill that hole in the tree and insert the tap, you've kind of started a clock, basically, you've got like four or five or six weeks before that sap flow will shut off naturally,” Bell said.

Nowling said that though the syrup-making season only lasts a few weeks, there’s work to be done year-round: clearing away dead trees, splitting wood and cleaning equipment. Nowling described the work as a labor of love.

“Once you stick your nose in the sap when it's boiling like this, and you get that smell early in the morning with the sun coming up, you never get away from it,” Nowling said. “You're hooked, line and sinker.”

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