March 2023 Newsletter 1

Despite the havoc the up-and-down temperatures of this past winter has wreaked on our immune systems, the weather yielded a record maple syrup year. February is when the sap starts flowing and maple farmers have about 6-8 weeks to harvest their sap. This brief window of opportune sap collecting proves to be a challenge, but for 2023, Sweet Nature has already made about 253 gallons thus far— putting them quite close to their 300 gallon goal.

“When the sun comes out, the taps start flowing. They’ll run all night if it stays warm enough (above 40 degree F.) You can see the buds on the trees already. When it gets warm enough for them to bloom, maple season is over,” explained Tom.

Sweet Nature started out with just 50 taps a few years ago as a way to collect a gallon or two of maple syrup for home use. In 2021, they decided to make the leap from hobby to “side hustle” as Tom described it and formed Sweet Nature LLC. These days, they consider themselves a “small-scale” maple farm, and have about 1,100 taps, the majority of them connected by vacuum tubing. Although they do have some traditional gravity buckets around to see how production is going, they’ve found that the vacuum method allows them to get 3-4x the amount of sap that a gravity drip would. Their operation is off-grid: the vacuum does the majority of the work through gravity and density, and solar panels provide energy for any electrical parts on the vacuum and the reverse osmosis machine. Since the maple sap is about 98% water, the reverse osmosis machine helps distill and remove much of that water so the boiler can run more sparingly and efficiently.

These upgrades were brought on by the success of Sweet Nature and those who are as passionate about local as we at Edinboro Market are. Tom said, “Most of the money from our product goes right back into our business to be able to make the process bigger and faster. The Market is a great way for local small business to be able get their product to the local buyers.”