BURTON, Ohio -- Consider these cold, hard facts about making maple syrup:
-- Warming days, followed by below-freezing nights, get the tree sap flowing.
-- Northeast Ohio's frigid February has led to a later-than-normal start to the syrup season, usually underway by Presidents Day.
-- Many local producers have not tapped their trees, a process which in a typical year would have started weeks ago.
"Mother Nature dictates this whole thing," said Bill Belew, whose Auburn Township farm produces 350 to 400 gallons of liquid elixir in a typical year.
"I think this'll be the latest we've ever tapped," added Belew, who is looking forward to a projected warm-up next week, so the sweet process of making syrup can begin.
Thousands of tourists are likely hoping for that warm-up, too – because trudging through the woods to see where syrup comes from is significantly more fun when it's sunny and 40 degrees.
Warm-up or not, the Ohio Maple Producers Association next week hosts its 14th annual Maple Madness tour, a drive-it-yourself circuit showcasing the state's sweetest agricultural product.
Sweetest, and one of the most prolific: Ohio consistently ranks among the nation's top syrup producers (behind Vermont, New York, Maine and Wisconsin), yielding 155,000 gallons of the sticky stuff last year.
The tour includes 50 stops – most of them syrup producers, and most of them in Northeast Ohio. (New this year: two locations in northwest Pennsylvania.) Some feature horse-drawn wagon rides out to the sugarbush, others offer historic demonstrations or additional farm activities.
Visitors can pick and choose among the stops, sustained on their journey by copious samples of syrup, stacks of pancakes and maple candy.
Among the stops:
- Belew's 70-acre Auburn Township property, known as the Messenger Century Farm, with the oldest sugarhouse in the area, built in 1842 (the one Belew uses, however, is somewhat younger, built in 1905).
- Sugar Valley Maple, where three generations of Amish farmers have been making syrup on 65 acres in Middlefield Township. "There's nothing I like better than being in the woods in the spring," said farmer James Miller. He was able to tap his 2,400 sugar maples during the brief weather warm-up last week, and made 131 gallons of syrup. But the trees have shut down production since. "I'm a little bit worried," he said. "With this cold weather, it could be a short season."
- And, of course, the Burton Sugar Camp and Log Cabin, a working sugarhouse in the middle of town, operated by the Burton Chamber of Commerce since 1931.
Other stops include the Cleveland Metroparks' Rocky River Reservation, Lake Metroparks Farmpark, and Hale Farm & Village in Summit County.
Tour coordinator Terese Volkman suggests the Burton Log Cabin as an ideal launching point. Visitors can get an overview of the syrup-making process here (before or after a belly-busting breakfast in Pancake Town USA), then spread out into the countryside.
The log cabin – modeled after Abraham Lincoln's Kentucky birthplace (and then expanded several times) – has been the site of syrup-making for more than 80 years.
The science of making syrup has changed significantly since then: Long lines of plastic tubing linking trees to sugarhouses have replaced hanging metal buckets on many farms, and reverse osmosis machines speed up the process of condensing the sap into syrup.
Even so, much about the process remains the same, said Amy Blair, administrative assistant for the chamber (who doubles as chief syrup maker and candy creator).
"It still takes 50 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup," she said.
The Burton Sugar Camp still hangs buckets from trees – up to 2,000 once all the trees are tapped, on parkland and other nearby property. Back at the sugarhouse, the sap gets run through a reverse osmosis machine, then is heated in the evaporator – until it reaches the perfect density and sugar content for pouring over pancakes and drizzling on ice cream.
Blair offers tasting samples that showcase the differences in syrups, which run mild to robust, light to dark.
Mother Nature, again, has the final say.
Two years ago, during the mild winter of 2012, Northeast Ohio syrup producers reported a terrible season. Maple trees were budding in mid-March, recalled Blair. "And once the trees bud out, the sap turns sort of sour."
Last year, on the other hand, was a record year for many producers. An early warm-up got the sap flowing for some farmers in late January, and it didn't stop until April, said Blair.
As for this year?
"Nobody knows how this year is going to turn out yet," said Belew.
Check in with him next weekend, though. He might have a better idea then.