McComb’s Maple Syrup
McComb’s Oak Hill Farm, located on
Other Maple Syrup producers in the area include Jack
Leadley, the Weavers, and the Wilburs. Leadley runs a much larger operation
than McCombs, and it is also much more old- fashioned. He boils the sap over a wood furnace, rather
than using the newer equipment.
The McCombs facility is very modern, and they try to
upgrade their equipment each year.
And
now for a quick lesson on making syrup…
The
Transformation from maple sap to maple syrup is an evaporation process, the
goal of which is to convert the sugar concentration of the sap from 2-3% to
67%. To do this the extra water in the sap must be boiled off. It takes about
40 gallons of maple sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. The goal is a grade A syrup, 
which comes in light medium or dark ambers. Whether
the syrup is light or dark depends on the season. If it is made early in the
season it will be light, if late it will be dark. As seen in the picture above
to the right, a grader is used to examine and determine the grade of the syrup.
The
McCombs establishment drills holes in the trees on their property, and inserts
tubes in them to transport the sap to the sugar house. The sap is drawn by a
vacuum, and then deposited in 800-gallon tanks. From there it goes to the 
boiler (which is powered by a wood furnace), where it
is refined as it moves through several chambers, each one evaporating more of
the water.
A
hint from Mr. McCombs to all of those entrepreneurial syrup producers out
there: “Syrup production is nature driven; you can’t tell ahead of time if
you’ll have a good season or a bad season, you just have to take it as it
comes.”