RICHMOND

Maine Maple Sunday returns this weekend, with free samples, tours, activities and demonstrations of how maple syrup is made at sugar shacks throughout the state.

Once the sap starts flowing, Maine-iac Maple Farm of Richmond starts the daily process of collecting gallons of the sweet, clear liquid from 200 maple trees and boiling it down to the maple syrup Maine is famous for.

Owner Michael Meagher said the operation began as a hobby and they’ve only opened up their sugarhouse to the public during Maine Maple Sunday for the last five years.

Maine-iac wasn’t open on Maple Sugar Sunday last year due to a bad production year. However, most years they enjoy 200-300 visitors. This year, Meagher said he expects a good turnout.

Meagher bought the property in the early 1970s, but he only began tapping trees and making maple syrup six or seven years ago. Tuesday afternoon he and his wife, Alice, checked the buckets on several maples spanning down the rolling ridges reaching to the shore of Pleasant Pond. Once they get 60 or 70 gallons they begin boiling.

Production slowed in the last week due to the warm weather when the temperatures weren’t dropping below freezing at night, Meagher said. Tuesday afternoon the sap was running again, though not at full force.

They pour buckets of sap into a 65-gallon tank on the back of a two-seater all-terrain vehicle.

Meagher also pumped sap into the tank from the barrel at the bottom of a hill collecting the liquid through two new tubing lines he recently invested in. The narrow tubing was developed by the University of Vermont and uses gravity to create its own vacuum. Meagher said the sap also seems to run longer using the tubing rather than the traditional buckets.

The art of making sugar and syrup from the sap of the maple tree was developed by Native Americans of the Northeast.

According to Maine Maple Producers Association, an average 40-year-old maple tree will yield about 40 quarts of sap per season which is enough to make one quart of pure maple syrup.

The association’s website notes it is an industry that can’t take root just anywhere: “The sugar in maple sap only appears where warm, sunny days and below-freezing nights follow each other for days on end, as they do in Maine’s long, slow spring.”

“It’s one of the best years we’ve ever had,” said Meagher. “We got a fairly early start. We started, I think, the third week of February.”

Thanks to a mild winter, the season started early, but it will also be ending early.

Other producers are all done with production, but will still have plenty of maple syrup for sale for Maine Maple Sunday.

Meagher said they have people stop by all the time while they’re at their sugarhouse and in production, but Maine’s designated day promoting the sweet commodity generates the most traffic.

Visitors can watch them make maple syrup the traditional way with a wood-fired evaporator and snack on ice cream topped with maple syrup.

It’s also an important economic engine for local syrup producers.

“Maine Maple Sunday, that’s the most important day of the season for us,” Meagher said.

Maine-iac Maple Farm is located at 56 Mitchell Road, just off Route 201 in Richmond and will be open Sunday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

dmoore@timesrecord.com

THE MAINE MAPLE PRODUCERS ASSOCIATION offers more information about Sunday’s event at mainemapleproducers.com. Local participants include:

• Goranson Farm, 250 River Road, Dresden, (207) 737-8834. Open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. with live music, maple sundaes, hot drinks, homemade baked treats, farm animals, sugarhouse tours and more.

• Real Good Maple Syrup, 326 Post Road, Bowdoinham, (207) 666-3343. Open 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. with sugarhouse tours, free ice cream with maple syrup and sales of maple syrup and other maple products.

• Red Door Sugar Shack, 33 Ward Road, Topsham, (207) 607-1548. Open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Small sap house with demonstrations. Syrup available anytime.

• Maine-iac Maple Farm, 56 Mitchell Road, Richmond, (207) 229-2590. Open 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Watch the production of maple syrup in a wood-fired evaporator and enjoy ice cream topped with maple syrup.