Keeping Sap Flowing, and Pancakes Dripping

Keeping Sap Flowing, and Pancakes Dripping

By DAVID STABA
Published: March 22, 2006
DARIEN CENTER, N.Y. — Eric Randall's family has produced maple syrup for more than 150 years in the tree-covered hills between Buffalo and Rochester.

Mike Groll for The New York Times
New York State is the nation's third-largest producer of maple syrup after Vermont and Maine. Eric Randall, above, continually checks the state of the maple sap during the boiling process in his sugar shack upstate.



The New York Times
The center of maple syrup production in upstate New York.
"And one of these years, we're going to get it right," Mr. Randall, a college dean and fifth-generation maple producer, said on a cold, clear day last week as he checked the tubes and pans he uses to collect and boil the sap until it is transformed into the sweetest of breakfast toppings.

The maple syrup made here should not be confused with the mass-produced imitation available in grocery stores. Most name-brand cane- or corn-based syrups contain little if any maple and are legally forbidden to use the word "maple" in their name or description.

"There is no comparison," Mr. Randall said.

New York is the nation's third-largest producer of maple syrup, trailing Vermont — which produces about one-third of the national output — and Maine. Production in 2005 fell almost 13 percent from the previous year, though New York's 1,485 "sugarbushes," as individual producers are called, still tapped 1.42 million maple trees to produce 222,000 gallons of syrup, according to the New York Agricultural Statistics Service.

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Nothing like the real taste of maple syrup. Corn syrup doesn't hold a candle.