Maple spigot connected to a sap line.

By Shari Benyousky
Guest Columnist

SYRACUSE — One day 4-year-old Ace Richcreek stumbled upon something in the old barn that changed his young life. “Hey, dad!” He pointed into a dark corner. “What are those?” He pointed at hundreds of tin buckets covered in cobwebs.

One of the maple trees at the Richcreek farm.

Four years later, on one of those February days that feel enough like spring that we wear lighter jackets and then regret it, Ace’s dad Adam Richcreek told me this story. I had arrived at their farm near Syracuse to see the Richcreek family’s revived maple syrup-making operation.

Adam adjusted his hood when a sharp gust of wind swept through the yard. “I saw those buckets there when I was a kid too. The old-timers in the family used them. We only use 30-40 buckets these days. Now, the three of us mostly use lines.” By three of us, he meant himself, Ace, and Ace’s mom Abbi, an engineering/technology teacher at Edgewood Middle School.

At this point, the front door slammed, and Ace himself arrived wearing an Ace’s Maple Syrup sweatshirt and a ball cap. These days Ace is 8 years old which is old enough to show me around and explain how the magic works.

“C’mon!” Ace wanted to drive his RZR UTV into the woods to check the lines. Abbi, Adam, and I jumped into another off-road vehicle and Ace led the way. The late winter afternoon sun slanted through the trees as we crossed the fields, and greening moss and dandelions emerged through the muddy tracks we followed.

Once we entered the dim of the woods, I could see the blue sap lines crisscrossing from tree to tree. The late afternoon sun made the sap within them glow. As we drove, Adam explained that 275 gallons of sap, one full container, boiled down into only about 6 ½ gallons of actual syrup. That’s a lot of water removed to make a precious amount of syrup.

Ace pointed out the spigots they had tapped into the maple trunks. “They only go in only about 1 ½ inches is all,” Adam explained. “We don’t want to hurt the trees, so we’re very careful.”

A syrup thermometer.

The sap lines emptied into enormous clear plastic cubes which the ATVs had to haul back to the barn when full. Abbi adjusted Ace’s hat, so he looked perfect for my camera. “On days that it’s running, I love to hear the sap as it races down the lines and swirls into the buckets,” she told me, and the three of them nodded and grinned at one another. Obviously, the sap lines saved time, but the old-timer buckets were cooler.

“What do you mean running?” I asked. That day the temperature hovered around 48 degrees. “Is it running today?”

“Nope,” Adam squinted at the amount of sap in an old-timer bucket. “For maple sap to run, there must be a freeze and thaw cycle. If it’s too warm or too cold all at once, the sap stays put. Freeze and thaw makes the right pressure in the trunk.”

We drove back to the farm as the sun went behind a giant cloud and the wind grew cold. I shivered as we walked to the barn to see a room-sized freezer where the RIchcreeks store the maple sap in enormous clear containers before boiling.

Sap is like milk and spoils if it isn’t kept cool. Adam pointed out the reverse osmosis gallon buckets which suck out half of the water content from the sap cubes overnight. This process saves them lots of boiling time. He saves the newly purified reverse osmosis water for washing the equipment.

Last in the process is the cooker, where the remainder of the watery sap cooks down into syrup. “We welded the cooker ourselves!” Ace told me proudly. He pointed out the pans where the sap cooks. “You have to be careful not to burn your fingers.”

“How many times have you burned your fingers?” I asked.

He shook his head emphatically. “A lot!”

“Sometimes,” Abbi smiled. “When the sap is running fast, the guys have to spend the entire weekend cutting wood and watching the cooker.”

“How do you know when the sap is done cooking?” I asked. Ace pulled out a giant thermometer and pointed out the important marks on it. Sap must be between 185-200 degrees to bottle. If it’s above or below, sugar sand develops a gritty texture and must be filtered out.

Ace with the syrup cooker.

“Where does the syrup go when you finally finish?” I asked.

“We give it to our friends and family for donations,” Abbi said. “But we are very small as an operation really.”

“I’m saving the donations for college!” Ace informed me. He ran off to get something as I asked his parents what else there was to know about syrup.

“What surprised me the most.” Adam lovingly checked the equipment. “Is how the maple syrup taste changes. The early sap is lighter colored. The later in the season the dark and more mapley it gets.”

Ace arrived lugging a quart of syrup labeled “Ace’s Maple Syrup – Syracuse, Indiana.”

“Which syrup do you like best?” I asked him. “The early or the late?”

“All of them,” he laughed. “I sometimes drink it right from the bottle!” He handed me the syrup and told me to have my kids put it on waffles. I was thrilled with the syrup and began to think through what to put it on. We may have had waffles for dinner.

Thanks, Ace!

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