Michigan’s maple syrup producers are facing climate change, rising equipment costs, and damage from last year’s severe ice storms. But new technologies are helping farmers adapt. I visited one family farm that’s combining traditional methods with modern techniques.
Six generations
The welcoming committee at Droscha Family Farms includes three Labrador retrievers – Ruger and Remy and Buddy.
Several children under the age of twelve ran around a playset near what Casey Droscha told me is the original farmhouse. The family first bought the homestead in 1911.
“The story has it that they purchased this place because of the maples," he said.
Droscha is the director of research and development for a Midwest dairy producer. He’s also a sixth generation maple farmer and the proprietor of Droscha Sugarbush, about 20 miles south of Lansing.
“And so you can see like our little grove here," he said, "every single tree in there is a maple."
He gestured to a small stand of trees with a little more than a dozen metal taps and buckets on one side of the driveway near the farmhouse.
Droscha said the farm is about 200 acres. They tap more than three thousand maples every year. Droscha also leads a co-op that taps roughly 4,500 more maples in the area.
Solar pumps
Collecting all that sap in buckets can be slow, not to mention labor intensive. On the other side of the driveway, a web of clear plastic tubing snaked between more maples that trees are much farther apart.
“Nobody wants to go back there and get that bucket and bring it all the way back here," he said. "And so one thing that we've been dabbling in is automated solar powered collection.”
It was a good day for it—a rare sunny Saturday afternoon in March. My colleague Kate Furby and I went to learn more about Droscha’s operation.
He lead us over to a small solar panel. It powers a nearby pump that’s hooked up to some of those tree tubes. The solar-powered pump draws the sap from many trees into one large barrel. And unlike the traditional buckets, Droscha doesn’t have to go out and turn the taps on individually.
“Gravity flows the sap to the pump. And then on the back side of the solar panel…we have a temperature gauge in Celsius that I'm turning the pump on at 4.1°C. It's currently 6.2," Droscha said. "Therefore, it allows the pump to be turned on… it basically runs anytime the conditions are right for sap to be to run.”
Costs and climate
Automated solar collection doesn't just save on labor, it also helps maple farmers adapt to the changing climate.
“It seems like the season is getting shorter every year, just because the winters are not as hard as they used to be,” Tyler Fanson said.
Fanson is Casey Droscha's cousin. He’s a full time farmer who grows about 3,500 acres of corn and beans. He and his family manage a farm stand. He dropped by with some sap of his own.
“And so now it's, how do we maximize the yield that we can get with the time that we have?" he said. "Casey’s developed a solar system. I put that in this year. And with how much sap I've already got off of that, it's paid for itself and then some.”
Droscha says equipment costs are rising.
Those iconic glass bottles have doubled in price in recent years, as has the plastic tubing they use for sap collection.
But sap collection isn’t the only thing that has gotten more efficient, the Droschas have also nearly tripled their hourly boiler rate as well.
Sugar shack
To take a closer look, we ducked through a low doorway into the sugar shack. Instantly, we were embraced in steam and a light, sweet, woody aroma.
“So this is kind of the kitchen," Droscha said. "Typically there's an ongoing buffet of taco salad and mac and cheese. What else we got here?”
He opened a crock pot to take a whiff.
"The pumps need fuel, but the, the people do too, you know?” he said.
Behind the kitchenette is the all-important boiler that transforms sap into syrup. It’s bigger than my car. Droscha described it as a huge double boiler that then flows into a lower temperature finishing pan.
We took a peek at the inferno inside.
“The flames are reaching through those bars. Those are called flues," Droscha said. "Those bars are full of sap. And so it increases our surface area like tenfold.”
That increased surface area makes the boiling process more efficient without compromising on the wood-fired flavor.
Droscha’s father, Bryan, is at the helm of this part of the operation.
"I've been making maple syrup for my whole 64 years," he said. "I collected sap from trees that my great grandfather tapped back in that woods."
He gives my colleague Kate and I a taste.
“This is probably some of the freshest syrup y’all will ever have,” he said.
It's delicious. The syrup has a smoky, bourbon-y quality and it’s still warm from the boiler. Kate is also a fan.
"Oh my God, it's so good," she cried. "Oh my goodness, it's so delicious.”
An investment pays off
After my visit to Droscha Farms, I caught up with researcher Jesse Randall. He’s the director of the Michigan State University Forestry Innovation Center in Escanaba. He is also a big proponent of automated sensors and pumps.
“I wouldn't even start without the sensor technology," he told me. "It's going to become universal. And, and once you use it, you will never go back.”
Randall credits the improving technology to an influx of USDA funding that began in 2018.
“I think we're just now starting to truly see the ramifications of all of that research,” Randall said.
Back at the sugar shack, Casey Droscha pointed out long before automated solar pumps came on the scene, the trees themselves were solar powered.
“You are capturing last summer's sunshine in the form of sugar that was passed down to the roots that came back up as sap," he said. "This is sunshine in a bottle.”
That must be why it tastes so good.
Editor's note: Some quotes in this article were lightly edited for length and clarity. You can play the audio version of this story near the top of this page.
