Local Maple Producers Report Productive Sugaring Season

At Wilcox Memorial Park, in Stanfordville, two dedicated stewards from Dutchess County Parks spent the last three months engaged in a time-honored dance with nature: making maple syrup. 

On a recent day on the cusp of spring, David Beck and Debbie Bierfeldt nestled rocks deep into the embers of a wood-burning fire. While they waited for them to absorb heat, Beck carved large notches into several logs, which he then burned with a hot coal, making them nonporous. The duo then filled the notches with untreated sap collected from nearby maple trees; a thin, clear liquid, known as maple water. 

Carefully removing the hot rocks from the fire, they gently placed them into the maple water, bringing it to a boil. The process evaporated excess moisture and left behind a sweet liquid that wasn’t quite syrup. This process could never remove enough water to create the maple syrup we love today. However, this sugary maple water would be used to cook other foods, sweetening them as they boil in the maple water.

Beck and Bierfeldt run an educational program that takes visitors through the history and process of creating maple syrup. Maple sugaring is originally an Indigenous practice that dates back at least four centuries.

“We have much better technology now,” Bierfeldt said.

Bierfeldt also oversees the modern maple production at Dutchess County parks. She and her team collect from trees in Wilcox Park and then drive it to Bowdoin Park, in Wappingers Falls. There, in the county’s sugar shack, they boil the sap into syrup.

Maple sugaring is a delicate science. The approach of spring brings the sap harvest to a close because fluctuations in temperature, from sub-zero to warm, are key to harvesting sap.

For Bierfeldt, 2024 was a successful harvest. Syrup created by the parks comes from the sap that flows out of the Wilcox Park sugar bush. This sap is transported over to Bowdoin Park to be made into syrup.

“When it was flowing, it was great,” she said. “We made 23 gallons of syrup, the most we’ve ever had. But because we had such a warm winter it stopped. We need that fluctuation from above freezing during the day and below freezing at night to harvest.”

The dramatic shift in temperature is the driving force bringing sap out of the sugar maples for harvest. Increasing global temperatures have thrown maple season off of its rhythm.

“I heard that some people started tapping in December, because of how warm it was,” said Lauren Gerstel, a chef at Fat Apple Farm, in Pine Plains. Though Fat Apple is primarily engaged in animal husbandry, maple sugaring is a passion of Gerstel’s that she brought to the operation last year.

“When it’s boiling, the sugar shack is full of steam,” Gerstel said. “It smells amazing.”

Fat Apple has 100 taps spanning the farm’s large property.

Like Bierfeldt, Gerstel also saw a much bigger harvest than previous years. On an average day she would collect 50 gallons of sap from all of the taps. However, the result is not 50 gallons of syrup. “For every one gallon of syrup, we have to collect about 40 gallons of sap,” said Bierfeldt.

Taking sap’s sugar concentration from 3% up to 60% is a long process.

“Someone is at the evaporator from 7:30 a.m. until an hour before close,” said Bierfeldt. Luckily for the syrup team at the parks, they have upgraded to a reverse osmosis system, cutting two hours off the time it takes to process their 1,100 gallons of sap.

“What happens is, the sap is sucked through the tubes, goes through the membrane and pure water is separated out,” Bierfeldt said.

Maple syrup has been cooked at Bowdoin Park since the 1970s, and Dutchess County Parks are experts in their field. School children from the area come to the parks for field trips to learn about the science of their pancake syrup.

“I tell them, syrup is good for you,” Bierfeldt said. “The minerals and nutrients from real syrup are good.”