Welcome to the Maine Farmcast. This is your host, Dr. Glenda Pereira, an assistant professor at the University of Maine and the dairy specialist for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. For this episode, we're gonna learn all about maple production and the work that our return guest, Jason Lilley, is working on. I know nothing about maple production except for that I like to eat maple syrup, and it tastes really good on ice cream, on pancakes, on so many things.

So looking forward to this episode, learning from an expert. Jason Lilley, thanks for being back on the Maine Farmcast.

Yeah. Happy to be here.

So we were talking a little bit about the Maine maple industry. I know actually a few folks who are Maine maple producers or just maple producers. Right?

Yep.

Is that the term? And I just need to learn so much more because it's a big part of production here in the state of Maine. And there's a big industry, but I'm not familiar with it. So can you as the specialist that support the Maine maple industry definitely know more about the sticky details of Maine Maple production.

Yeah, absolutely. So, so it's such an interesting industry. It's something where I grew up in Northern Maine, kind of a lot of time in the woods but also have more of a draw towards kind of agricultural systems. And it was just really interesting. Well, actually one farm that I worked at, they had large scale vegetable production, but they also in the wintertime would do maple.

And so that was my first exposure to really what it was to tap a tree and efficiently boil down syrup or sap into syrup. And that kind of opened up the door for me to go down this path and get more involved in the industry here. And now in my role with Extension, I'm supporting folks who have three trees in the backyard and they want to learn how to tap the tree, how to keep the tree healthy, how to efficiently boil down syrup and to safely finish and can that maple syrup. So that's one area is working with the backyard operations or helping folks to start up commercial operations. I also am very involved.

I'm the co director of the Maple Grading School. So this is an international, it's on both sides of the border. And we work with producers and industry leaders and bulk buyers. So packers of maple syrup to to train folks on how to make sure that syrup is meeting the USDA standards, that is a high quality, that it doesn't have off flavors, that it's not going to go bad. So that is a really fun part of my work.

And I also do a lot with and this is a growing part of my focus is working with producers on what is the central component of the industry is a natural resource and the woods and the sugarbush itself. So that's been a fun, a fun part of the work and something that I'm like just constantly learning more about and diving into.

And how many trees are tapped annually in the state of Maine? What'd Interesting you

question.

Maybe acres of trees?

We have 500 licensed producers. We produce 500,000 gallons of maple syrup a year. In The US we're the third largest producer of maple syrup. Yeah. And we won't mention Quebec because Quebec produces an insane amount of syrup every But it's, it's really interesting.

Like there's this cross border collaboration and the majority of our syrup is produced right kind of along the Quebec border in And far Northern that's just kind of a natural phenomenon partially. And that is just really excellent growth, growing habitat for sugar maples. So you naturally have these ecosystems that are primarily made up of that tree species. So Somerset County is the largest producing County of maple syrup in The US. That's we have these operations that are pushing 200,000 taps per individual operation.

Wow.

So there's a huge economies of scale as far as the efficiency of the boiling, but that still means that there are people in the woods pushing a drill bit into a tree and tapping a plastic spile into a tree 200,000 times.

Yeah. So yeah. That's incredible. And their on season is?

So in Southern Maine, we can get started as early as early February. I think most people usually keep in mind the February, but that is totally weather and forecast dependent. And then up into that Northern tier, that's usually probably three weeks later to get started and can go into late April.

Wow. Yeah. So those folks are out there in those wintery months. February is always, you know, a snowy month. So those folks are probably like going over inches of snow, tapping feet of snow.

Yes. In that area for sure. That's incredible.

Yeah. And they, it's actually, they, many producers have intentionally lifted their tubing system so that they don't get buried by snow. And then they'll have these tap pullers, which is just a metal pole. And that can be four or five feet long because where they were walking on the snow and easily reaching and tapping by the time the snow melts and it's time to pull the taps, they need these big long poles to reach where the tap was. So it's, yeah, a lot to think about.

Wow. That's awesome. And then you talked about this sugar bush thing. Tell us more.

Yes. So as I mentioned, the central resource and the thing that makes this whole industry a possibility is the woods and the trees. And of course that is totally dependent on a healthy and natural and vibrant, you know, natural resource. And we, let's see, probably four years ago, I started to get quite a few calls, especially in kind of the Franklin County region.

They were experiencing really severe droughts and I go up and see these sugar bushes and the trees were just obviously extremely stressed. And we call the Sugar Maple, the Goldilocks of trees. It doesn't want to be too wet. Doesn't want to be too dry. It really needs pretty specific soil conditions and topography and all these types of things.

So unfortunately we can see that these changing weather phenomenon, the changing climate can have a pretty severe toll on the trees. So from that, talking with my colleagues in Vermont, talking with a colleague here at the School of Forest Resources at UMaine, We we decided that maybe we should pull together some resources and educational materials to help maple producers, sugarbush managers, consulting foresters, whoever's involved in the industry to better manage this resource. Another thing I've experienced is you know, I'll show up at a sugar house and a producer, you know, just a few times. He's like, come look at this. I just went out and managed my sugarbush.

And what they did was cut every single tree except for a sugar maple. And we know that a vibrant ecosystem, especially this long lived perennial ecosystem needs diversity. It needs something to break the march of the pests that are going to go across, or it needs something to, that is more deeply rooted to help hold up its neighbor trees and all that. So again, that's, that was more of that impetus for why we, you know, we kind of need more education so that we can more intentionally manage the sugar bush versus just going out and getting a couple of sticks of firewood and, and cutting everything except for the sugar maples.

Yeah.

So we're really excited. We're about a year into this project now and we have, we're about to launch the level one of this micro credential. And I'll kind of step back and explain what a micro credential is quickly.

Yeah, go ahead.

So this is kind of a new, a new approach to community education and the University of Maine is really piloting and being a leader in this, this approach. As opposed to a college for credit class where there's, you know, sixteen week requirement or however many hours, this is maybe a step down from that, but it still is a course that's recognized by a university as being robust and meeting, you know, a certain set of criteria that is laid out by the university. So what that means is that when a consulting forester or a sugarbush manager or a high school kid that's in a vocational program goes through this course, they will get a certificate and they can put a stamp on their resume or on your business's website and say, we've gone through a fairly formal training on this topic. And you know, you as a potential client or you as a potential employer can see that there's proof that we we've kind of dove in and that we're serious about learning about this topic.

Yeah. So that's specific to sugarbush production.

This one that we're developing right now.

Yep. So what are some of the topics that you cover in that?

Yep. So this level one is more kind of the foundational information. And so we really dive deep into how a sugar bush or a sugar maple, I should say, how that works. Like how does the sap run and what's the purpose of the sap in the tree and what are the different components of the tree? And then we get into what are the stressors?

So why is it that a drought condition or saturated soils or heavy winds would stress out a maple tree? We also get into climate data. So we're going to lay the foundation for how to better understand the state of our climate and how it's changing and what the projections are and how to really lean into reliable sources of information. Another aspect of this is that it's not just going to be made for Maine maple producers. We're hoping that it is out there for folks across the entire maple producing region.

So we're going to help folks identify what are the good the good sources of data and information that are reliable in our different regions across the maple producing region.

That, yeah, that sounds really resourceful because like you were mentioning, there's quite a few pockets in the North American continent, not only because you're mentioning Quebec folks, Quebec producers produce quite a bit of maple syrup as well. So you'll have those folks sort of accessing this content that you and colleagues have created. And I think it'll be really resourceful. Even for people like me. I like we started off the episode.

I'll be honest. I know very little about maple production other than it's tasty. But but like you mentioned, there's a lot of folks who are beginner level that come to you. There's folks who are even probably have been doing this for quite a bit some time, but there's still some knowledge gaps.

Right.

Like like you were mentioning that one producer that sort of took away all the diversity in that sugar bush and then it kind of really had probably a big impact on production the following years. Right. Yeah. Yep. So you're meeting gap for essentially a lot of folks.

Right. And wherever they are. And so this intro level one, I'm sure so you'll have more. Like a series

So of it will be three levels altogether. And like I said, the first level is kind of like, here's this base information that will help with decision making. And then level two and level three are much more applied. So essentially what we're going to guide participants in doing is to identify on your own property or a property that you might work with, what are the biggest stressors that are putting that property at risk and how do we develop adaptation strategies to alleviate those risks? We're excited about Jason,

this has been super informational. Is there anything else we missed about the program that you're going to be conducting in the next couple of years that you wanted to mention to our listeners?

Well, should say that this has been funded by the USDA's Ag Marketing Service and their Acer Access Program. And we're very grateful for that funding. We're going to not only have this course as an outcome, but we're going to be doing woods walks at least in Maine and Vermont. So to get more folks who are interested and get out in the woods during the growing season. And this summer, the September, which is very soon, we're going to do an invasive species walk in York County.

So we'll be out looking at invasive plant species in the sugarbush and talking about best ways to eradicate or manage those. So we're really trying to look at this kind of holistically and to not, again, just not just have the course, but to have maybe a few fact sheets and some some in person workshops that are going to come out of it as well.

That's awesome. So folks can look up our UMaine Extension calendar. It's going to have the events that Jason was mentioning. It'll be listed there. You can also always reach out to Jason and and email him.

But look at the calendar and reach out to your Maple Network folks because they'll probably be sharing some of of this as well. Your invasive species one and then following events, related to this project. So thanks so much, Jason, for being on the Maine Pharmcast again. We always learn so much from you.

Yeah. Thanks for having me.

If you have comments, suggestions for future topics, or any questions about our episodes, be sure to email us at extension.farmcast@maine.edu.