March 20

Skowhegan maple syrup producers celebrate 30 years of Maine Maple Sundays

By Doug Harlow dharlow@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

(Continued from page 1)

click image to enlarge

Jack Steeves with some of the various glass containers filled with maple syrup made at Strawberry Hill Farms in Skowhegan.

Staff photo by David Leaming

click image to enlarge

Jeremy Steeves uses a hydrometer to check the sugar density of maple syrup coming out of an evaporator at Strawberry Hill Farm in Skowhegan on March 11. Steeves and his father, Jack, are making syrup for retail and the Sunday's Maine Maple Sunday event.

Staff photo by David Leaming

Additional Photos Below

MAINE MAPLE WEEK CONTINUES IN SKOWHEGAN

Thursday

10-11:30 a.m. and 3-4:30 p.m. — Maple leaf cookie decoration at The Pickup Cafe at the Somerset Grist Mill

Maple specials all day at Redington-Fairview General Hospital cafeteria.

Friday

Restaurants featuring maple foods

• Old Mill Pub — Maple chipotle wings

• The Bankery — Maple mouse domes, maple whoopie pies and apple maple blossoms

• Alice's Restaurant — Maple breakfast special

• Kel-Met Cafe — Maple special

• Redington-Fairview General Hospital cafeteria — Maple specials

Saturday

7-10 a.m. — Pancake Maple Breakfast at Tewksbury Hall

8 p.m. Comedian Bob Marley at the Skowhegan Opera House

Sunday

Maine Maple Sunday. See our What's Happening section for a list of area maple syrup operations open to the public on Maine Maple Sunday.

The farm is also among numerous sap operations in Somerset County, which was named by the USDA in 2009 as, among all the nation's counties, the one with the most maple taps. Maple producers in Somerset County reported 1.26 million maple taps in the Census of Agriculture by the USDA in 2007, the most recent data available.

The next-closest county was Franklin County, Vt., with 715,535 taps.

Robin Helrich, a USDA maple statistician in Concord, N.H., said the department is collecting information now for another survey, possibly to be released in 2014.

The Steeves family first started making maple syrup in the 1840s and has been bottling the stuff commercially for 40 years. The sap for Strawberry Hill is collected using a vacuum system, stainless steel holding tanks and miles of sap lines crisscrossing the sugar bush.

By last week, with warm daytime temperatures and freezing temperatures overnight, Steeves estimated his production is about one-third of the way through its season. By Sunday — Maine Maple Sunday — production should be about halfway through.

Production is just getting under way up north and is about finished in southern areas of Maine, he said.

Steeves said this weekend's events will include tours, demonstrations and treats such as warm maple syrup spooned onto ice cream or drizzled onto snow for traditional maple taffy, all free by the spoonful.

Last year, Steeves said, Strawberry Hill Farms had about 3,500 visitors during the Saturday and Sunday of Maine Maple Weekend.

"You can't count them, because the whole yard's full and the cars are parked to the top of the hill and down the other way," he said. "You know how we figure how many were here? We count the spoons."

Doug Harlow — 612-2367

dharlow@centralmaine.com

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Additional Photos

click image to enlarge

Jeremy Steeves moves a barrel filled with 40 gallons of hot maple syrup as his father, Jack, prepares to fill another barrel inside the sugar camp building at Strawberry Hill Farm in Skowhegan on March 11.

Staff photo by David Leaming

click image to enlarge

Jeremy Steeves reinserts a maple sap spile into a tree in the woods at Strawberry Hill Farm in Skowhegan. Steeves said he has 250,000 feet of sap lines transporting sap to the nearby sugar camp, where an evaporator boils the sap into syrup.

Staff photo by David Leaming

 


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