DUNN COUNTY (WQOW) – With warmer days and freezing nights, it’s maple syrup season in the Chippewa Valley.
At Maple Essence Farm in rural Dunn County, it’s the busy season. Ronald Trainor owns the farm along with his wife, and he has been tapping trees for several decades. He took over the land from his father in the 1990s, and now he pulls sap from roughly 12,000 trees that dot the hills of the area with the help of family, friends and neighbors.
With warmer days and freezing nights, it’s maple syrup season in the Chippewa Valley.
The collected sap then drips down miles of tubing where it’s stored, then ultimately pumped to where it’s cooked.
As for how this season is turning out, it’s too early to tell.
“When nature tells us to quit, we’re going to quit,” Trainor said. “If the weather warms up, doesn’t freeze anymore at night it’ll be hard for us to get sap and it’ll be hard for us to cook it. So far it’s been okay, but the verdict is still out whether it’s going to be an average year, a good year or a poor year yet, so it could be any one of those very easily.”
According to Trainor, it was a slow start to the season, but it has picked up. So far, the sap they’ve collected is sweeter than normal, which means it takes less time to cook in the wood-fired, reverse-osmosis evaporator that boils away the water and creates the amber syrup.
Typically on a cooking day, the farm can produce around 50 to 55 gallons of syrup an hour.
Maple Essence Farm products can be found in grocery stores across the state, and new this year, the family-operated farm will also be offering maple sugar.
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