Feature: Syrupy Goodness

Dale Green of Green's Sugar Bush

It's not too many businesses that can say they've been in operation for 165 years.  But Green's Sugar Bush of Castalia can make that claim.

Owners Dale and Karen Green say their maple syrup operation has been around since 1851.  Says Dale, "The operation hasn't changed much over the years."  It still takes a long process of tapping maple trees, collecting their sap and then boiling down 43 gallons of sap into one gallon of maple syrup.

Dale Green says his farm taps 1,400 trees in the spring, collecting enough sap that they need two 1,250 gallon cisterns to store it.

 But the biggest step is evaporating all the water in the sap so that only the maple syrup remains.  "It takes a lot of fuel," says Dale, noting that the wood-fired evaporators use almost as much fuel in one day as his house does in a whole year of heating.

But when the sap is at last turned into maple syrup, it gets filtered and poured into glass containers and is available for sale.  This year's weather hasn't been perfect for maple syrup production, Green says, but his family will still be working to make what his brochure calls "one of nature's rare treats."