It's a gray, rainy March day outside, but inside the Greene family sugar shack, it鈥檚 nice and warm. Three generations of the Greenes are gathered in their sugarhouse, prepping for one of their biggest events of the year. So far, they've boiled down 187 gallons of maple sap, and it's only 10 a.m.
"It's fun,鈥� says Zoe Greene. 鈥淚t's kind of one of those things where you're amped up, ready to go. We鈥檒l see thousands and thousands of people.鈥�
The wood stove is blazing, and above us, the ceiling is completely obscured by sweet-smelling steam billowing from the bubbling tanks of sap that are slowly but surely boiling down into syrup.
Alan Greene is a 6th generation maple producer. To say he鈥檚 got it down to a science would be an understatement. To hear him talk, he may as well be a syrup sommelier.
"Every batch that comes off that evaporator is different. Every batch has a different nuance to it. It has a different flavor, depending on the minerals and the temperature," he says.
Soon, the Greene family's syrup will be bottled and ready for the thousands of people who descend on sugarhouses the fourth weekend of March for Maple Syrup Sunday 鈥� the height of what is known as 鈥榮ugar season鈥� here in Maine.
鈥淲e want it to be fresh,鈥� says Greene. 鈥淪o we make it all the night before and by noon tomorrow, it'll be gone."
But it won't just be in liquid form. Wife Valerie Greene has been hard at work whipping up maple cookies, maple whoopie pies, and even spicy maple salsa. And this year, for the first time, a buddy is bringing a smoker over to cook up BBQ ribs, featuring, of course, homemade maple barbeque sauce.
"He stopped and bought some syrup. He said, 鈥業'm gonna go make some barbecue sauce. I'll be back.鈥� And a couple hours later, he came back with some ribs. And he's like, 'Try this, see if this works,'鈥� says Greene. 鈥淚'm like, 'Oh yeah, that works perfectly fine.'"
Mainers have been celebrating Maple Syrup Sunday for 42 years 鈥� and Alan Greene's father, Ted, was one of the founders. Well, sort of. The day was actually born from a happy accident 鈥� a misunderstanding when a journalist interviewed his father for the Sunday newspaper back in the early '80s.
"Somewhere in talking with my father for several hours, he got the impression that we serve pancakes on Sundays during the sugar season,鈥� Greene recalls. 鈥淎nd along come the paper on Sunday morning, and they're all excited to read that we're in the paper. And my parents read it and it says, 鈥楢nd they serve pancakes every Sunday morning!鈥� And they looked at it and said, 'Oh no.'鈥�
Greene鈥檚 mother, Loretta, ran down to the local store, bought up all the pancake mix, and started cooking.
鈥淎nd sure enough, the yard started filling up with people, and us kids were shuttling plates of pancakes across the road to the sugar house. And so my father, at the end of the day, said, 鈥榃e got to figure out a better plan,鈥�" Greene said.
The plan, after consulting with other local maple producers, became what is now Maine Maple Sunday Weekend: on the fourth Sunday in March, Mainers know that sugarhouses are open to the public, with a fresh supply of syrup for the tasting. As the years have gone on, each farm gives the weekend their own spin, from live fiddle music to maple cotton candy to tree tapping demos. And of course, pancake breakfasts.
Today, it's become an important weekend for sugarhouses, which can make around 50% of their yearly income over a single weekend.
Alan Greene, in addition to running his own sugar house, is the president of the Maine Maple Producers Association. He says this year was a banner year for sugar houses 鈥� he and others broke attendance records. And despite carefully prepping syrup for above average sales, by Sunday, they had sold out.
"About one o'clock Sunday, I actually started taking syrup from the evaporator. We were pumping it over through the filter and directly into a finishing rig. And I had a crew packing syrup all afternoon and selling jugs of syrup. They were 180 degrees, and people were walking out of here as fast as we could pack them.鈥�
The weekend's success comes as a relief for many maple producers. Last year, due to an ice storm, Maple Weekend had such low turnout that farmers had to give away or donate unsold perishable products, like whoopie pies and pancake batter. It was a huge financial loss for some.
For the Greene family, this year is the culmination of years of work: they opened their new sugarhouse just in time for the season. It's about four times as big as the old one. Brothers Jason and Alan Greene say their dad poured the concrete foundation for this building over 25 years ago, but never got to finish it.
鈥淭his building was his dream,鈥� Greene says.
When his father Ted passed away several years ago, Alan Greene carried on that dream, finally finishing the new sugarhouse. The antique wooden cart his father used to haul wood is still in use, right next to the wood stove. Now, the youngest family members, Weston, 3, and Ellie, 2, are busy loading it with kindling.
Greene says it was his father鈥檚 vision to have an insulated, warm place for the family to carry on sugar-making.
"It's so nice to be all under one roof for a change," he says. "We worked outside for so many years, just in the rain and the snow. We'd be out there wheeling barrows out into the snow and the rain, and running equipment, and soaking wet. And you go in the sugar house and the wind blowing through, and it just was miserable. There were nights where we were huddled against the evaporator to stay warm, and the wind was howling. We don't have to deal with that now."
Making syrup for a living is no joke. It takes roughly 40 gallons of sap from a maple tree to make one gallon of syrup. Many still collect the sap in buckets and manually haul them to an open fire to spend hours boiling down. After all the hard work, Maine Maple Sunday is celebration.
"The whole sugar season is a rite of spring, especially around here," Green says. "It always has been. I remember at town meeting when I was a kid, the old timers would come up to my father and say, 'I see you tapped.' They'd see the buckets on the trees, or see that we were all working on the lines, and they, it was like a relief for them that, 'I made it till spring, I survived another winter.'"
