Welcome everybody to Midday magazine for this Thursday March 6, 2025.
Have your host James Jamail off here and welcoming into the studio.
Our good friend Anna James Mitchell, she is a natural resource educator with UW-Madison
Extension Wood County and a good to have you with us. Good to be here James.
Thanks so much for making the time today. I did not I wanted to get going here at
everything. I didn't even ask how you're doing and if you're settled in and
everything appreciate you being able to just jump right in. Yeah of course.
And I appreciate the topic today as usual you bring in a topic that we don't get to talk
nearly about enough. Now this one is a little more common but it happens to be one of my favorite
topics in the world maple syrup. I love maple syrup it's something that one of those things that
I want to grow my or grow you know make my own someday and all those things. So I was very
excited to dive into this topic with you. Yeah awesome well I figured it would be a timely
topic given that I think some folks are thinking about tapping trees making maple syrup
Wisconsin tradition and yeah Wisconsin just has a super rich rich history with maple syrup.
A very rich and deep history and I like what you did there with the rich. It's such a deep
history. This goes back to Native American roots. Yeah it does so Native Americans in Wisconsin and
other states in the upper Midwest use maple syrup as medicine food trade goods and gifts and
while I was doing a little research on the topic I found that Dr. Susan Deborah Wade she did
her dissertation on the relationship with Native Americans indigenous peoples in maple syrup
and one interesting thing that I found in her dissertation was that indigenous woman in
Wisconsin would trade maple sugar and other goods with the fur trading companies. So I thought
that that was just an interesting you know dynamic with maple syrup being the good. Probably led to
the popularity of maple syrup in other areas it's spreading to those areas and everything
then bringing those goods over there and I don't think many of us as much as I know about maple syrup.
I don't think many of us knew that it had medicine ties to. Yeah yeah I couldn't find a lot of
information on the medicinal ties to it other than that it was mentioned as something that the
indigenous people used could have even been a sweetener for for you know certain medicines
that were more bitter or something like that. It could have been that's a very good observation.
Yeah and maple syrup I mean in early days was a primary sweetener for pioneer homes so for
most of 1800s pioneer homes would use maple syrup as sweetener because the import cost and the
cost of cane sugar was so expensive. That's really interesting. Yeah it is. So if we fast forward to
modern day history maple syrup still plays a really large role in Wisconsin's culture and economy
in fact the state is currently the fourth in nation's maple syrup production. Oh that's pretty
cool. I don't know if many of you knew that. Yeah I did. I figured it was high on the list didn't know
if it was top five that's really cool. Yeah it is really cool and in 2024 Wisconsin produced
458,000 gallons of maple syrup and the 2022 crop was valued at $14 million. That's a lot of money
in our economy. I don't like to ask questions that throw at you or anything but I wonder if that
includes you know you're on the side of the road your mom and pop maple syrup sellers and some of
that. Yeah so what I was finding I can't remember where the report was from but it did have
those different like whatever scale vendors maple syrup vendors it did account for that cost.
Very cool. So I thought that that was really interesting. Yeah and some of the better maple syrup you
get is usually like that. It's so good. Yes it is. Not the stuff you get off the shelf. It's like
when she started right. So yeah when I said the maple syrup crop that's correct maple syrup is
actually considered a production in agricultural activity by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue
and woodlands where sap is collected may be assessed as agricultural use value for property taxes
and saving producers money. So I thought that was really interesting that it is actually considered
a crop here in Wisconsin. It's very cool and maybe even a little bit more encouragement to people
out there to do you know we look into doing this. Yeah yeah and Wisconsin you know there's a lot
of for lack of better terms untapped sources for maple syrup in Wisconsin. So our state has 3.7
million acres of maple forest and only a small fraction of those less than 0.5% are currently being
used for maple syrup production. So as the demand for maple syrup continues to grow nationally and
internationally there's a greater potential for growth in the industry. So even more reason for
people to kind of get out there and start tapping those trees start doing this. Yeah it's super
interesting there are thousands of maple syrup producers in the state of Wisconsin and you know
we touched on this you have your small mom and pop you have maple syrup producers that are
larger scale. So those producers can range from hobbyists who tap only a couple of trees in their
yard to those large scale full-time businesses that makes maple syrup from tens of thousands of
trees. So majority of the producers here in Wisconsin are small small scale producers that maybe tap
a couple of hundred of trees. Wow it a method necessarily is exactly what you're focusing on here but
this brings to mind to me when you mentioned the thousands of growers and every one of these maple
syrups is going to taste a little bit different than the other and everything and how how creative that
is. Yeah I don't think I even as a creative think about that very often the creative process in
ag industry and in things like this if you are somebody you know late to this if you will and you
wanted to start doing this how you would make it different than the others. Yeah the creative part
of that and I just find that really cool. It's like that's really interesting and it also speaks to
this is another thing that I love when happens in life. You know everybody's got their favorite
maple syrup and none of us are wrong. Like it's you know we all got our favorites and everybody's
a little bit different. I think that just speaks to also why there's so many of these growers crop
people growing these crops. Yeah yeah it's really interesting and I think another really cool thing
about maple syrup production is that it's a super sustainable agricultural industry or source.
Right so the most commonly tapped trees in Wisconsin are sugar maple, red maple and silver maple
but other species can produce syrup as well. So in fact syrup can be made from other trees besides
maple trees so you can have birch trees, walnuts, sycamore and beach trees but maple syrup
it comes in the name. The maple trees are the most common source for tapping to get maple syrup.
Anna to ask a city boy question. Are you going to get a different flavor from different trees?
Yeah it seems like you would yeah yeah yeah it's really interesting and I was learning a lot
while digging into this only because my husband and I are tapping trees for our first time this year
so this was a really relevant topic for my learning experience and for the audience too.
So yeah like I had said maple syrup production is one of the only agricultural crops that comes
from a native ecosystem and it's a very sustainable industry since maple trees can be tapped year
after year decades and even centuries. I was reading that there's a couple of trees in Maine that
a family has been tapping for over 200 years. Wow I thought that that was super cool. That's amazing
and I cannot imagine what that tastes like. Oh I got to try that. I would love to try that. That would
be really cool. That's really cool. Again another thing that I don't think a lot of us knew about
this process that that that could be I think it makes sense when I think would you take a step
back and think about it in the age of trees and some of this but not something we would have thought
of when we're you know pouring it on our pancakes or something. Right yep and you know supporting
sustainable industries is always really valuable so I'm going to get into a little bit of the
details of how to make maple syrup so we'll start with the sugar bush which is a forest stand
so a tree a stand of trees right in a forest that's dominated by maple trees and that's the maple
trees are where the sugary sap is collected for maple syrup production. So the forests are natural
ecosystems that provide habitat for wildlife opportunities for recreation and other ecosystem
services like air filtration soil stabilization and water purification. So maple syrup producers
don't plant the trees right they're managing the forest and maintaining the natural ecosystem
and then getting the goods of maple syrup from that tree. Yeah so very cool. It's really interesting.
Yeah very uh you know that's it so this is uh so getting into the basics of this that it's kind
of like leading us into that right like the basics of the syrup production itself and some of that.
Yep so this is just a very high level view of how maple syrup is made because I just I don't know
who knows this information so I thought it would be really cool to share. I'm taking notes over here
yeah yeah um so the first step of making maple syrup is actually tapping the trees so on January
or February um maple producers start drilling holes into their trees and they'll insert taps um so
there's specifications on which trees can be tapped and generally they're looking for trees that
are about 40 years old um because they're about 10 to 12 inches in diameter so those trees are
large enough to tap um and then the second step is allowing the sap to flow from the trees right
maple syrup comes from sap um so in summer the trees will generate sugar through photosynthesis
and the sugar content then allows the the trees cells to breathe it promotes its growth
and it accumulates in its roots during the winter as storage right so that sugar is created by
photosynthesis and stored as an energy source um so when spring comes and the temperatures start
to vary between night and day sap begins to flow up and down the tree which I thought was really
cool so on warm daytime temperatures um the warm daytime temperatures in spring causes the trees
woods to expand and the sap in the branches are put under a really strong amount of pressure
which makes it flow down towards the trunk so if a tree is tapped the sap that is flowing
down towards the trunk goes through the tap and is collected in the buckets yep and then in the
evenings or in the nighttime during spring um spring days you know that nighttime it kind of gets
below freezing when that happens the wood contracts and squeezes off the flow and then more
sap will rush up the tree from the storage in the roots so it's like just a cycle that's happening
within the tree and that all occurs because of the previous summer's photosynthesis so it's a
really cool cycle it's it's interesting too that this is a cycle that would exist even without
a sadness which is always kind of cool to me similar to bees and honey and some of these things
where we've kind of found our our way to insert ourselves into mother nature to to find our resources
if you you know and anything we might need there one thing I want to just go back to for a second
in the first steps of this um the idea that a tree had to be certain height or weight or size
and age again another thing that I don't think a lot of us knew going into this conversation
that's really interesting too yeah you know and I couldn't find the exact reasoning why but I
just thought that it was really interesting to put that little fact in like 40 years old that's
we're looking for a tree that's 40 years old to tap which I thought was really cool
we're speaking with Anna James Mitchell from UW Extension and now we get to harvest now we get
to harvest that sap so when harvesting when the the maple syrup producers get to harvest harvest time
they'll catch the sap in the pales that hang in the trees if that's generally like that smaller
scale producers will use pales if you're at the larger scale what a lot of producers will do is
they'll connect tubing systems from tap trees to tap trees and then they'll use gravity
to drain the sap to a central location and I'll never forget the first time I saw this I was
out in the middle of nowhere and there was just a stand of trees with this blue tubing going
all throughout it I was like I've seen a lot of things I've never seen this I was really confused
by what it was a little jarring at first yeah yeah and then it clicked those are maple trees that
must be for maple syrup production yep so after harvesting the sap the maple syrup producers will
create maple syrup through the spectacular process of evaporation so sap is made mostly of water
and a small amount of sugar in fact it's actually about two percent sugar and the rest is water
so in order to get syrup producers will boil the sap which causes the water to evaporate while the
sugars become denser then there's chemical reactions in the boiling process that caramelize the
sugars and creates that maple flavor and develops the color wow that's where the color comes up
okay all right wow so it's all chemical reaction and then the syrup is filtered and the
producers will remove any remaining minerals that might settle out and then syrup can be graded
to industry standards so basically means they're going to look at the color of the syrup
and fitting it into a category based on how much light passes through the syrup so there's
like an actual science behind this I had no idea behind yeah and there's actually four categories
of flavoring or color that syrup can be categorized as so the first is a golden delicate flavor
an amber rich flavor a dark robust flavor and a very dark strong flavor so I've never taken the
time to consider what flavor my maple syrup is other than maple syrup flavor yeah yeah same
that's that is wild and I've got to look into that more I want to know the differences of those
things and if I can notice a difference in tasting them and I'm gonna have to do it I have to
this is homework this is part of my job I have to do when it comes to the effort of this too
there's an effort that goes into doing this and it's but there's it's such a
reward-based thing I feel it feels like yeah it is a big reward right and a lot of effort to get
to the end product in fact I thought this was really mind-boggling it takes 40 gallons of sap
to make one gallon of maple syrup that's incredible that's incredible wow so that's
that's a lot of effort for one gallon of maple syrup it really is um this has been so much
fun Anna I've really been enjoying this and I'm positive the audience has too we've got a good
four or five minutes left what I wanted to do is ask you a couple of real quick questions and
one of them I appreciate you sharing that you your husband you kind of getting into this world
a little bit when you were doing your homework for this interview or for you know doing even some
of the studying that you did to do that with your husband and stuff um did you notice any
for I don't know how else to put this evolution to this I always find it interesting for everything
that night tomorrow there's a new way of doing this and tomorrow there's a new way of doing that
we're still changing tires the way we always have you know that has that process has really evolved
we're still doing it the same way we did our parents did and their parents did yeah with uh
the throughout you're kind of giving us the history and the process of this I'm not hearing a lot
of evolution to that out of here we kind of just do this the way we've always done it which is cool
I think uh there's no right or wrong thing here it just thought that was interesting have you
did you notice any changes or you know yeah so I would say innovations to this system so um
right historically and most commonly your smaller scale producers um we'll collect sap in buckets
and then boil it you know some people use which we're planning to use is like a turkey fryer to
boil the sap to boil the water off the sap or they'll do it in cast iron over an open fire
but then you have your large scale producers that are converting reverse osmosis systems which are
for water purification they're using the reverse osmosis systems at the larger scale
for evaporation and creating syrup so I mean if you think about it that's that's innovation
within the system it's not change are still it the science the basics are still there right they're
still evaporating the the water content out of this syrup or out of the sap but they're just doing
it in a different way so there has been evolution in in the process which I thought was really cool
that is that yeah that that really is uh when it came to things that surprised you with this
research was there anything that really stood out to you like wow I really I didn't know that
that was fascinating that's really interesting yeah I think um I had never thought about um maple
syrup production being as sustainable as it is you know it just never dawned on me and then as
I started digging into it and thinking about it I was like wow that is actually really cool we're
using a natural ecosystem um in one of the many ways that it can be utilized and we're not really
disturbing it at all you know and it's still there as a natural habitat part of the ecosystem
and we're just maintaining it and making it healthy too say we've been doing this a while
yeah you just touched on something I thought was really cool that kind of I hadn't thought of but
really popped in my head as you were describing and talking about some of the process of this
we're able to do this and the tree is fine yeah tree is perfectly fine doing this thing um that's
such a what a what a great uh if you had to give people an example of humanity and nature
yeah co-existing and working together you this would be one of the better examples you could give
of it yeah symbiotic relationship yeah it's just really cool yeah it's just very cool and and
something that I don't think we um we take the time for very often to think of um I know for me
there's no way I'm not having breakfast for dinner tonight I'll be honest with everybody
that this conversation does it's just hugely impossible it's not gonna happen uh but while I'm
doing that pouring on my waffles or whatever I am I will be thinking about this I and I don't think
that there will be many times going forward I won't think about some of this stuff we talked about
one of the other things I thought was really cool and I love to get Wisconsinites points to be
proud of um we uh years ago uh I found out doing midday interviews how how much ginseng wasn't
important here and I did not know that beforehand I think we we got some people some new information
there as far as taking some pride in something in maple syrup so um it's something that I I think
most Wisconsinites have a local like love for or a respect for or understand how big it is maybe
locally but to see it nationally being ranked fourth yeah that's impressive and that's the big tip
of the head to our ag industry it is yeah definitely and just a big encouragement to any of the
listeners I just support your local maple syrup producers you know instead of buying the generic brand
off the you know shelf at the grocery store which holds its place but you know spend a couple more
dollars and support your local maple syrup producers I hear here I second that I do want to give
this though with a little bit of a public service announcement to the audience when you do have
that maple syrup you will not go back no there is no going back to the store bought stuff they're
done it's just impossible um there's a place for everything but that stuff there especially
you're working you're looking for that red label oh maybe Wisconsin label and everything
that the only thing that maple syrup tastes sweeter is knowing that it is locally sourced
locally that you're supporting local yeah and you guys are doing something over extension you
got a program for maple syrup over there yeah we have a maple syrup program which is really
interesting there's a lot of wonderful um educational videos and information uh it's more geared
towards folks who have never grown maple or who have never produced maple syrup and they're
interested in getting into it so if this is something of interest to you you want to learn more
I would highly encourage you to visit the UW Extension maple syrup program site um their website
is maple.extension.wisk.wisk.wisc.edu like I said a ton of great videos to get you started and
ton of great information on that website. I have a bookmarked. I have put it side already
and Anna people have follow questions for you I'd like to know more uh how can they reach you?
yeah you can stop by the wood county extension office or you can email me at anna.m.james.wisk.wisk.wisc.edu
always a blast hanging out with you thank you so much Anna I appreciate you being able to make
the time today we'll talk soon yep well a more midday magazine coming up for you right here at
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