Hugh's Sugar Shack Hosts Open House for Maple Weekend

With 600 taps in place, Hugh's Sugar Shack uses modern tubing, but also 400 buckets to collect sap, making it the only sugarhouse of the seven I visited during Maple Weekend, March 21-22 and March 28-29, in St. Lawrence County, New York, that is still primarily using buckets for sap collection.

Hugh and Sally Newton operate Hugh's Sugar Shack, the fourth sugarhouse I visited on my self-directed tour. They have a two-building maple syrup making operation, comprised of a garage and a sugar house, located in back of their home right on the main highway in a rural neighborhood of Pierrepont, New York.

Sally welcomed me on a beautiful, sunny Saturday afternoon, March 28, at the entrance to their garage where inside she had prepared a Maple Weekend Open House display, complete with a hospitality table offering coffee and donuts.

Sally noted that they are having a very good 2009 season so far. On his first run, Hugh collected 1,350 gallons of sap, which is double the quantity he usually gets. She attributed the increase to the perfect sap running temperatures in the North Country this spring - freezing nights and above-zero days. With possibly two more weeks of prime sap-running weather remaining, this could be a very big year for Hugh's Sugar Shack. They have already produced 90 gallons of syrup.

Sally estimates that for their operation, with 600 taps placed two to three on a tree, it takes about two to four hours to collect the sap for each run, and then about one hour of boiling for every 100 gallons of sap to make syrup. The Newtons' son and grandson help, along with a couple of friends.

The display told the history of how the Newtons have been making maple syrup here. Originally, they used a wood fire to boil sap, but have since converted to oil. There is an old metal 'grim' that they formerly used as a tap, placed right along side the new plastic taps the Newtons use now. The plastic taps are smaller and require a comparatively diminutive hole. That's important, Sally notes, because you can never use the same tap hole twice and need to drill new ones every year. An old tapping tool (a drill they had to hand-turn) was placed next to the gas-powered tapper they use today.

Since 200 of the 600 collection buckets are connected to plastic tubing, on display were pieces of the 5/16" tubing and 1" mainline tubing the Newtons employ. The 5/16" tubing is used to feed the sap from the taps into the 1" main line that empties into a holding tank. Sally notes that they don't use a vacuum system. Hugh drives a trailer with another larger holding tank into the sugar bush and collects from the holding tank, then drives that load to his maple syrup making operation where he pumps the trailer load into two tanks - one tank in the sugar house and the other in the garage. There is a huge silver tank at one end of the garage marked 'Raw Sap'. The sap is then processed through a Reverse Osmosis machine in the sugarhouse, which cuts Hugh's boiling time in half because it removes most of the water before it goes into his evaporator.

Also on display are some of the old pieces of sugar house equipment the Newtons no longer use - some of them hand-crafted. There is a metal sifter-like device with a long handle called a 'foam scooper', an old metal 'test cup', and a very simple thermometer (most producers today, including the Newtons, use computerized controls to maintain temperatures).

There is also a classic syrup tester - a wooden holder of five jars that measures by color the different grades of syrup. All syrup makers still use a version of this tester to mark their syrups as variations of light, medium and dark amber.

At the end of the display is the old 'white sock' type of filter that is still in use today by some syrup makers. The sock is actually a felt filter, usually lined with a paper filter that uses a drip method to clean debris from the syrup. On display is a unique, homemade metal filter holder the Newtons formerly used to hold the 'sock' - it is a wonderful piece of ingenuity. The Newtons currently use the newer press-type filter.

Wrapping up the display is a big metal, handcrafted bucket washer that the Newtons still use today. After all, their operation does have 400 buckets in use!

Inside Hugh's Sugar Shack
After the display tour, Sally takes me to the sugarhouse to meet Hugh. On this warm afternoon the temperature outdoors is in the mid-fifties, but indoors, with the evaporator boiling at full tilt, it feels like 75-degrees and my glasses immediately steam up!

First thing, Hugh hands me a little paper cup of warm syrup to taste. It is absolutely heavenly!

Hugh explains that his Reverse Osmosis (RO) machine is about 10 years old. It takes out approximately 50% of the sap's water. Water molecules are smaller than sugar molecules, so they pass through and out, leaving the sugar, he explains. Before he acquired the RO machine, Hugh estimates that he made about two gallons of syrup per hour, but now by using RO he can make four to four-and-a-half gallons per hour.

That purified water is stored in a tank in the garage and used for bucket cleaning while the sap goes into a concentrate tank and then to the evaporator. A float measures the amount of sap in the tank and automatically controls the flow into the evaporator.

Hugh's evaporator is 30" wide and 8' long. It burns four gallons of fuel oil every hour. His evaporator also uses a 'Steamaway' that utilizes steam heat to enhance evaporation.

Hugh shows me the filter press tank where the syrup is held before it goes to the filter press. He uses food-grade diatomaceous earth with paper filters to remove the niter (sediment) from the syrup. The syrup then goes to the canner, is heated to 180-degrees and sealed in jugs.

Hugh takes a catalog from the shelf and tells me it's his 'dream book' - he shows me an evaporator with a hefty price tag that will evaporate 32 gallons of sap per hour!

Prices for the Newton's syrup this year are $48/gallon, $28/half-gallon, $17/quart, $10/pint, and $7/half-pint. The market for Hugh's syrup is primarily local small businesses as well as individuals that come to his sugar operation to buy. He operates a 24/7 back porch retail outlet on the 'honor system' - people take the jugs and leave the money they owe.

Last year, Hugh's Sugar Shack was sold out of syrup by Thanksgiving.