For two weekends in March, the 22nd annual maple weekend will take over New York State with more than 168 locations bringing maple education and activities into the public’s eye.
Since 1953, the New York State Maple Producer’s Association, NYSMPA, has made it their mission to promote practices for maple syrup cultivation in New York State.
“We’re a trade organization and we’re not-for-profit and our mission is to promote the best practices for forest and making maple syrup amongst our members,” said Helen Thomas, Executive Director of the NYSMPA. “Then to help them [members] promote their product sales.”
The organization is a trade association, so most members are farmers, with a few educators. The organization serves as a unification to discuss matters, Thomas said. Such as new recipes, events and even the changing climate that is affecting the New York maple industry.
The temperature change in winters has taken a major toll on the maple production, local farmer Kim Enders said.
“We need warm days and freezing nights in order to have the trees create the pressure to push the sap out,” said Enders of Red School House Maple. “The last two years have been really hard because this year we should have tapped around the first of the year…but we were all tapped by the end of January, took advantage of everything that happened in February and here we are, March 25, and we’re basically done.”
According to the Cornell Maple Project, the average sap season lasts about six weeks, but varies greatly based on temperature.
Temperature is a major factor for the maple syrup production, however there are events sponsored by the NYSMPA throughout the year, Thomas said.
“There are a bunch of workshops and training schools held through November to January every year around the state,” Thomas said.
In the summer, NYSMPA holds a maple tour.
“[The tour] is two or three days in one location visiting the sugar houses and members in that region to train, [view] techniques and to see what other people are doing,” Thomas said.
For non-members, the organization puts on maple weekend, which brings the public inside the sugarhouses and offers everything from tastings to maple tours.
Enders and her husband, Kevin, are two members of the NYSMPA and opened their sugar shack to the public as part of the maple weekend.
From March 18 to 19 and March 25 to 26, the Red School House of Fulton, New York. was open to the public and filled with local maple products ranging from syrups to mustards, candies and even meat rubs.
“It’s still kind of a hobby, I mean it’s a business and I want to make a lot,” Enders said.
Events like the maple weekend help local farmers to integrate their maple products with the community.
In addition to maple weekend, a popular time to sell and generate revenue for the maple products is during county fairs and the New York State Fair, where the organization does most of its outreach, Thomas said.
Many people were able to learn about the NYSMPA and the maple weekend through Iheartoswego and their community calendar, said founder Victoria Usherwood Gailinas.
“Our organization was created as a community service to provide people with the knowledge of every event that happens in Oswego and some of the smaller communities,” Usherwood Gailinas said.
The maple weekend organization was an opportunity for local farmers to showcase their work, sell their products and offer community enrichment, which allows for New York State to be ranked as the second largest maple producing state in the nation, according to the NYS Maple website.
