Rutley's Maple Farms Shows Off State-of-the-Art Operation for Maple Weekend

No question when you arrive at Rutley's Maple Farms - this is a big operation.

While all seven of the sugarhouses I visited on Maple Weekend had limited parking on the shoulder of the road (except for Cornell Cooperative), this operation had a full-fledged asphalt parking lot with plenty of space for visitors.

But that wasn't the only hint of the size of this operation - the big, new-looking sugarhouse was edged with dozens of drums, piled high and waiting to be filled with syrup. Major pieces of Caterpillar equipment were parked outside the sugarhouse, indicating to me that lots of heavy materials were being pushed, pulled and lifted here.

Rutley's Maple Farms in Sanfordville, just outside of Potsdam, is the fifth sugarhouse on my self-directed tour of maple syrup-making operations in St. Lawrence County, New York, for the 14th Annual New York Maple Weekend. Rutley's hosted Open Houses on March 21-22 and March 28-29.

On this sunny Saturday afternoon, March 28, welcoming picnic tables with tablecloths were set outside the entrance doorway to the retail shop (a converted garage), which was connected to the sugarhouse. I'm told Rutley's served a pancake breakfast to morning visitors. As an afternoon guest, I had my share of sampling inside the shop, which was filled with various maple products - syrup, cream, candy, sugar, cotton candy - and opportunities to try them. Plus, while we were listening to our tour guide, a hostess passed a plate of hot dogs boiled in syrup, sliced and served on a toothpick! Delicious!

The retail shop opens to a spacious room revealing a gigantic evaporator at work, with steam rising up and out of the airy room. The whole space was clean, new and shiny, and several men were simultaneously checking elements of this gleaming contraption of pans and pipes, climbing steps to reach parts of it. It was like watching a locomotive engine in a train station, full of power and raring to go!

When a small crowd of about 10 gathered in the shop, a tour guide (who turned out to be the owner's father-in-law) began his energetic presentation, telling us the history of the operation and how they make maple products at Rutley's Maple Farms.

Charlie Rutley started in the maple syrup business working for someone else, tapping trees with buckets. In 1995 he went into business for himself. Charlie expanded into commercial production and installed modern equipment to keep up with growth. The monstrous-sized evaporator in use now was installed four years ago. Charlie had to build this bigger structure to house it and now the old sugarhouse across the parking lot is used for storage.

Currently, Rutley's Maple Farms has 22,000 taps. Each tree produces approximately 15 gallons of sap. It takes three trees with three taps each to make one gallon of syrup.

The operation produces between 6,000 and 8,000 gallons of syrup each year. If you are not familiar with maple syrup production, these are very big numbers!

Sap Collection
In the maple woods, Rutley's uses two to six mainlines that collect from the lateral drop lines that are connected to between six and 10 trees.

Rutley's starts drilling taps in mid-February using a two-man team. One man drills the hole and the other inserts the tap. The drop lines remain in place year-round, so they only need to be connected to the new tap. Then they are ready to go!

As the sap begins to flow by mid-March, it's collected in a 15,000-gallon receiver jar.

A vacuum machine in the woods runs the system. Our guide noted that the vacuum doesn't 'suck' the sap out of the tree, but instead because of the pressure it creates, it makes the tree produce more sap faster than it would by gravity alone. Since Rutley's utilizes about a dozen different woods, they have to keep the vacuum machine running at all times when the sap is flowing.

The sap is then collected from the woods by truck and pumped into two 3,300-gallon tanks at the sugarhouse. These huge tanks are actually recycled cheese tanks! To see these tanks, our guide leads us past the evaporator, through a room with two Reverse Osmosis machines, and into another room that houses these two huge holding vessels of sap.

When these tanks are full, Rutley's makes 80 gallons of syrup in one hour or less. This season has been especially good because of the excellent weather conditions. This morning, they were producing 100 gallons per hour. They average about 700 gallons of syrup per day. Our guide dunks a finger into the sap and tastes it, pronouncing it good and invites the rest of us to try it as well.

Reverse Osmosis and Air Injection Evaporator
Next, we retrace our steps to the Reverse Osmosis (RO) machines. They cost $50,000 each and are essential to this operation. Without them, the producer would use three gallons of fuel oil to make one gallon of syrup, but with the RO, Rutley's uses half a gallon of fuel to make one gallon of syrup. The RO takes most of the water out of the sap before it gets to the evaporator, which saves boiling time and fuel oil. Still, Rutley's averages $40,000 in fuel bills each year!

The water from the RO machines goes out to a tank, and the sap concentrate is pumped upstairs where it flows down by gravity through PVC pipes to the evaporator.

We head back to the evaporator room and our guide gives an overview of how it works. The front pans of the evaporator are equipped to use 'air injection' through air tubes, which increases the boiling efficiency by 10%. Two oil-fired burners, one in front and one in back, heat the sap. They are powerful and can take the sap to the boiling point in just two minutes. If the boiling gets too high, they squirt it with canola oil, as fat will check the boil.

When the sap reaches the syrup stage, it is pumped through a filter press. Rutley's mixes food-grade diatomaceous earth with the syrup, which binds the niter (sediment) onto the papers in the waffle-like press and traps it out of the syrup. The niter will make syrup cloudy if not filtered out.

It's an extremely efficient system. As our guide pointed out, today the crew started up the evaporator at 10:00 AM and by 2:00 PM they had already made 200 gallons of syrup.

Rutley's makes Grade A and Grade B syrup. The 'A Grade' is light, medium, and dark amber and packaged on site. They also make the candy and cream on-site with a very simple method. The syrup is heated to about 190-degrees Fahrenheit, mixed with an auger as it crystallizes, and then poured into molds. The traditional mold for candy is the maple leaf. The butter-like maple cream is especially good on toast and apples, our guide noted.

Rutley's Maple Farms' quantity production obviously keeps the prices lower than at some of the smaller operations - syrup sells for $40/gallon, $22/half-gallon, $12/quart, $7/pint, and $5/half-pint. A pound of maple cream or maple candy is $10.

Charlie Rutley
As the tour ends, I go back to take photos of the RO machines, and am lucky enough to meet the owner, Charles Rutley. He tells me that there are only a couple of operations this size in the state of New York. The big drums of syrup he produces are shipped to packers and suppliers, and the product ends up in big chain restaurants and stores such as Cracker Barrel and Wal-Mart.

Charlie notes that his operation sells syrup year-round. He cheerfully points out that as big as this operation is, they operate the retail store on the 'honor system' - it's unattended and people can stop in, make their selections, pay and go.

He pointed out that his expenses not only include state-of-the-art equipment and fuel oil, but also leasing properties to ensure he has adequate supplies of sap.

When the syrup-making season is finished in mid-April, Charlie shuts down all the equipment for the rest of the year. After that, he builds houses and moves snow - another use for all of that Caterpillar equipment outside the building.

But for right now, Charlie and his crew are making syrup as fast as they can, because as he pointed out - you've got to make it when the sap is here!