BRATTLEBORO -- It’s a good time to be a sugarmaker.
That was the consensus of those in attendance at the Windham County Sugarmakers annual meeting on Thursday.
Prices are currently coming down to a more reasonable amount, and last year was one of the strongest sugarmaking years in recent history.
"I had the biggest crop I ever had," said Bruce Bascom of Bascom Maple Farm in Alstead, N.H., whose family has been sugaring since 1853.
"We got 24,000 gallons, the most ever bar none," he said.
About 20 sugarmakers attended the meeting in the Brattleboro Savings & Loan meeting room, where members of the organization used their time together to learn more about different aspects of the industry and to elect new officers, including a new president.
Windham County Forester Bill Guenther gave a presentation on the Asian Longhorned Beetle and the Emerald Ash Borer, non-native species of insect that have been known to cause tree damage in North America.
The Asian Longhorned Beetle is of particular concern, Guenther said, because it has a taste for every species of maple.
Generally found attacking Norway Maples in urban areas, the Asian Longhorned has been found in forested areas as well, said Guenther.
It wiped out 15,000 maples in the Worcester, Mass., area, he said, just 45 miles south of the Vermont border.
The main concern for arborists like Guenther is that people who own second homes will bring infested
The beetle needs this kind of method of transportation in order to spread north, Guenther said, because they are not particularly good flyers.
"All it would take is to move the wrong piece of firewood out of that area, but luckily Massachusetts has a pretty strict quarantine, and violators are subject to some pretty strict fines," Guenther said.
Included in his Powerpoint presentation, which was put together by Ron Kelley of the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation, were several photographs of the beetle. They are shiny and black with long, black and white segmented antennae and blue legs.
He also showed pictures of the holes they make in the trees, which are less than half an inch in diameter and perfectly round.
Another species of beetle that looks similar but is native to Vermont is the White-spotted Pine Sawyer, Guenther said. He added that about 30 people come to him with White-spotted Pine Sawyers last year, wondering if it was an Asian Longhorned, but that thankfully none of the suspicious bugs were the dreaded non-native species.
He stressed the importance of reporting an Asian Longhorned beetle sighting quickly.
"If there is an infestation and we find it quickly, the chance of nailing it is pretty good, but if someone sees it and doesn’t say anything it can cause big problems.
He added that it’s thought the beetle had been present in Worcester for eight years before it was recognized as a problem.
Guenther also spoke about the Emerald Ash Borer, which is a green beetle that feeds on Ash trees. Quebec currently has infested areas, just 30 miles north of the Vermont border, and foresters are making an effort to keep tabs on the bug.
There is an outright ban in place, he said, with no firewood being moved from Canada to the United States.
There are multiple sticky purple traps in each Vermont county, and both this year and last year they have come up clean with no Emerald Ash Borers to be found.
The group turned the topic of their conversation to tapping methods when Dr. Tim Perkins, director of the UVM Proctor Research Center, took the floor.
Perkins has been working with his team on a Maple stand in Underhill to gather data regarding gathering sap.
Perkins’ research from the past two years showed that a check valve he developed significantly increased the production of sap.
The valve has a ball bearing in it that prevents sap from running backwards, back into the tree, Perkins said. The patent was recently sold to Leader Evaporator Co., which has begun production but currently has a lot of backorders to fill as the product becomes available to the public, Perkins said.
After Perkins’ presentation the group voted on new officers, and Robert Wright stepped down from his seat as president. The group unanimously voted that Mark Hastings of Black Bear Sugarworks in Guilford step in to fill the role.
The Windham County Sugarmakers, like many other organizations, has suffered from continued membership loss over the past several of decades, Hastings said, and he would like to create an atmosphere where the group would see increasing enrollment.
"The social aspect of these associations is big part of their lifeblood," Hastings said, "so I would like to see us have more lively meetings with local and homemade foods, especially those that incorporate maple, as part of the reason to come spend the evening with us."
Hastings made a batch of maple-covered almonds to share at the meeting; he said that by turning maple into a candy product, profitability can be increased by as much as 30 percent.
After the election, Arnold Coombs of Bascom Family Farms led a discussion about the various methods and markets for selling syrup.
He said it’s important to figure out what size you want your business to be and then really get behind your idea and go from there.
"The sky is the limit," he said.
He spoke out the importance of setting yourself apart from the competition by offering services that no one else has.
"We do demonstrations in grocery stores," he said. "We do not do pancakes and syrup in the demos, but we have shown people how to use maple syrup to make a glaze for grilling chicken."
The idea, he said, is to introduce people to new ways of using maple syrup in their cooking.
Sugarmakers need to make sure they are not selling themselves short, Coombs said. Certain expenses need to be taken into consideration in order to make a profit. He said he is constantly picking up the tab for people dropping glass bottles of his syrup in supermarkets.
Coombs also mentioned something that in the next couple of years will change the way we buy maple syrup; he said that in a conference he attended with both American and Canadian sugarmakers, it was decided that syrup will be classified in more descriptive categories which include "golden delicate," "full amber," and "dark robust" in contract to current labels like "fancy" and grades A and B.
The new system eliminates one class of syrup, Coombs said, and those sugarmakers present said that they thought it was a good idea.
"I think it will give people a little better idea of what’s in the bottle," said local sugarmaker Daniel Crocker.
Jaime Cone can be reached at jcone@reformer.com or 802-254-2311, ext. 277.
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