By this point in the season, Wilton’s Ambler Farm should typically be wrapping up its production of syrup, one of the farm’s biggest money-makers and an important commodity. But an atypical March with unseasonably frigid temps for much of the month has had a ripple effect, pushing Ambler to the point of using up most of its firewood supply, crucial for syrup production.
As a result, the farm is in dire need of dry, split firewood, and they need it…now. Ambler’s program manager Kevin Meehan is appealing to the Wilton community to support the Farm when it most needs help, in a similar fashion to the way a community historically might pitch in to help a member in need.
“We are a community farm, and a lot of people are involved, from high school kids to families who adopt trees. Any little bit the community can add would be great. Even bringing by just a car trunk load of wood will help. People may like to do that with their kids to show how anyone can help the farm,” he said.
This year’s maple syrup production was unusual for more than one reason. The sap flow was unusually light at the start of the season, and it didn’t really pick up until recently. When it finally did start to run, super low temps made things complicated, according to Meehan.
“The thing that was incredible about this year, it was so cold. We have about 350 taps that are not on the Ambler Farm property, at 10 different sites. Because I have so many tasks off property [like teaching science at Cider Mill], I need high school kids to go with me to collect the sap. I pick them up at the high school Friday at the end of the school day and Saturday morning. But when the sap did eventually run this year, it wasn’t at convenient times for pickup, so it froze in the collection buckets. The kids would fetch the buckets filled with frozen, icy sap, and I’d have to use a hammer to smash the ice into garbage cans. I think I have collected almost as much ice as I have collected liquid this winter,” Meehan explained.
The Ambler troops would transport the cans back to the Farm’s White Barn kitchen and set the temperature to 80 degrees to try and melt the ice overnight. “Then we actually used our colonial pot, just like the colonists would have done, to melt the ice in order to put it into the evaporator. But that means I’ve used an extraordinary amount of wood just to melt the ice, not even for the wood-burning evaporator. It’s silly. The kids just kept building the fire up again and again.”
Once the sap is collected and brought back to the farm, it’s usually boiled in the evaporator and reduced down to the syrup. Typically they would have had plenty of wood, even with all the ice. But because the sap is now flowing so heavily, and very late into the season, it’s compounding their dwindling kindling supply.
“This is the biggest run we’ve ever seen, and it’s coming the last week in March. I’ve never collected sap the last week of March and I’ve been doing this for seven years,” Meehan said. “Usually by the 14th of March I’m telling people that the program is over and I’m washing buckets. But we have so much sap right now there’s literally 10 more days of boiling. I may hit April 10, still making syrup. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Without the wood, that sap will just sit and might be lost. “I literally have 18 30-gallon garbage cans full of sap. And I have two 125-gallon tanks full, and two 125-gallon tanks in the Sugar Shack that are almost full. I can’t collect the sap that’s out there because I don’t have anyplace to store it. That’s probably 60-70 hours of running the evaporator to turn it into syrup. If I look at the wood I have right now, I think I have enough to get us through Wednesday.”
According to Meehan, time is critical, and the critical time is now. “As a non-profit, this is our product that generates revenue for the farm. It’s not just a break-even program. The maple syrup is a premium product that represents everything the farm does–it’s an agricultural product, it’s an educational experience, and it’s organic. And it lasts all year, unlike any other agricultural product. When you have cucumbers, every other farm has cucumbers. The fact that maple syrup can last makes it a great product for us to sell throughout the year.”
Last year’s syrup run netted the Farm close to $20,000. “Think about what that does, that’s huge. This year, I thought it was going to be a terrible season, but there’s a good chance it will be our second best year. But I don’t want to let the season end and have 1,000 gallons that we didn’t turn into syrup.”
Meehan is asking for anyone who can to donate already-split, dry wood and bring it to the Farm. “Just leave it in front of the yellow garage and I’ll move it from there.” Anyone who needs to contact Meehan directly can call him at 203.667.6941.