Sweet work: Ohio State program provides maple syrup as part of lesson

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story by Erin MacLellan first appeared in the Ohio State Alumni Magazine.

MANSFIELD — Follow a winding trail into a forest on Ohio State’s Mansfield campus and you’ll find a grove of maple trees called a sugar bush.

Here, faculty, staff and students work together to make one of the university’s sweetest products — pure maple syrup, a small-batch delicacy so coveted and delicious that it sells out each year.

Look around and you’ll see more than a thousand maple trees linked by plastic tubes and small computers — technology that makes harvesting the sap more efficient than hauling buckets. If your timing is right, you’ll see Buckeyes checking trees to collect data for important research.

This year, it was a groundbreaking research project aimed at helping Midwestern syrup producers improve production and cope with recent challenges created by warmer winters and shorter seasons.

Next year, it will be making the harvesting system more resilient.

In the thick of it all, you’ll find Gabe Karns, visiting assistant professor in the School of Environment and Natural Resources, who oversees the maple operation.

Whether he’s fixing a leaky plastic tube, measuring sap or guiding a tour group, Karns loves to tell the story of how Ohio State got involved in maple sugaring.

He’s especially proud of one thing: “It all started with students. We wouldn’t be here without them.”

Karns is referring to four students who in 2015 were pursuing a capstone project to apply the knowledge they’d gained in their coursework to a real-world challenge. The seniors, who were majoring in fisheries, forestry and wildlife, studied the 600-acre forest on the Mansfield campus and created a plan to guide the university in managing the woods.

“As part of their report, the students identified a small section of forest as an ideal sugaring site,” Karns says. “That’s how it began, with just two lines in a lengthy report.”

But two lines do not a sugar bush make. Two years later, another capstone group took a deeper dive, identifying different maple species in the 19-acre section of the forest. The trees seemed perfect for tapping, but the students wanted more input.

They shared their report with the Ohio Maple Producers Association, which represents about 1,000 producers in the state.

“We were excited about Ohio State getting involved,” says Dan Brown, past president of the association and co-owner of Bonhomie Acres in Fredericktown, south of Mansfield, where five generations of his family have been making syrup since the 1800s.

“Ohio State’s Extension agents have always been very active in maple syrup education, and we knew that the research they did would be very important to our future.”

Several maple producers pledged support—from installing equipment needed in the Mansfield sugar bush to processing and bottling the syrup. Yes, excitement was rising like tree sap during a winter thaw.

Tapping a resource

Right away, Kathy Smith ’85, ’89 MS, director of Ohio State’s Woodlands Stewards program, recognized how a sugar bush could boost the university’s efforts to help landowners throughout the state.

“Research is part of the mission of a land-grant university,” Smith says. “And it’s what Extension’s role has always been, to take whatever we’re learning and help people apply it in their lives, whether that’s a woodland owner, a maple producer or a member of the public.”

Ohio has deep roots in the maple syrup industry, Smith says. Ohio settlers first learned how to make maple syrup from Native Americans, who had been tapping trees to make maple sugar and syrup for centuries.

From there, the industry took off, as maple was the only affordable sweetener at the time.

“Ohio was the top maple syrup producer in the 1860s and a leading producer for many years,” Smith says.

And from the university’s earliest days, faculty and Extension agents have provided education and resources to Ohioans involved in agriculture.

While Ohio no longer dominates the industry — Vermont, New York and Maine far outpace it — maple syrup contributes about $5 million to the state’s economy each year, economists estimate.

Smith saw the sugar bush as a great demonstration project.

“A lot of woodlands owners are looking for income opportunities other than timber,” Smith says. “They may not want to harvest timber, or maybe their trees aren’t ready.

“So they could visit our site and see if this was something they’d like to do themselves.”

But before anyone could start tapping trees in Mansfield, supporters needed funding. In 2018, Ohio State staff contacted a well-known maple supporter, John Patterson. At the time, Patterson was a state representative from Geauga County, where one-third of Ohio’s maple syrup production takes place.

Patterson jumped on board.

“Research is critically important when you’re talking about advancing a food crop, which maple syrup is,” says Patterson, now executive director of the USDA Farm Service Agency in Ohio.

“We rely on Ohio State for all kinds of research related to agriculture, and I thought it would be great for Ohio State to expand its research and outreach in maple syrup.”

Patterson, who remembers tapping maple trees in his backyard as a child, cited other benefits.

“Maple syrup is a driver in the economy,” he notes.

From selling syrup and maple products to hosting festivals that draw thousands of tourists, maple producers contribute significantly to the state.

Once Patterson secured state funds, the university was ready to commit money and staff. The various forces — faculty, staff, students, maple producers and legislators — converged in 2019, when Ohio State bottled its first maple syrup.

Nearly six years later, the program is so successful, it pays for itself and supports student scholarships and jobs, Karns says.

Anthony Tambini ’20 worked as a maple research assistant, an experience that opened new career options for him.

“I ended up starting a land and habitat management company,” he says. “And Gabe Karns was the one who encouraged me, saying, ‘You’re really good at this; you should do it.’ I got an entire career out of that job experience.”

Tambini so enjoyed his work with the program that he took time off from his job last season to help tap trees in the Mansfield sugar bush.

“I wanted to give back to a program that gave so much to me,” he says, “and I wanted to see how the woods were doing.”

Maple madness

On a cold, rainy day in March, visitors to Mansfield’s sugar bush find that the woods are just fine.

About 100 people arrive on campus to participate in the statewide Maple Madness tour, a yearly event. Smith serves fat, fluffy pancakes to guests, who douse them with Ohio State syrup, while Karns leads tours in the woods.

“The process is the same, whether you’re using metal buckets or a vacuum-assisted tubing system,” Karns says. “You tap the trees, collect their sap and boil it into syrup.”

Demonstrating the process, Karns drills a small hole into a tree and attaches a spout. As liquid dribbles out, he explains that tree sap is mostly water.

“You need a lot of sap to make syrup. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to get 1 gallon of syrup.”

A network of plastic tubes carries the sap to a tank in a shed, where a piece of equipment called a releaser shoves it into a collection tank.

When the tank fills, Karns calls Roger Gortner, a retired Ohio State staff member and owner of Gortner Maple in West Salem, Ohio. A loyal volunteer with the program, Gortner takes the sap to his facility to boil it in an evaporator.

During Maple Madness Days, Karns uses a small evaporator, similar to a wood-fired stove, to showcase the process. As the temperature rises, the sap begins to boil in the attached pan, releasing clouds of steamy sweetness into the air and thickening into a dark, thick syrup over several hours.

Along the way, Karns measures the liquid’s sugar content, which starts at 2 percent and needs to rise to 66 percent to be labeled pure maple syrup.

The work requires precision and patience, but it’s worth it, says Les Ober, an Extension educator who has made syrup on his Northeast Ohio farm for 40 years.

“It’s addictive — getting out in the spring, working in the woods,” he tells folks gathered at the Mansfield site. “You know, it’s hard to tell somebody why you would go completely nuts about this, but you do.”

Not to mention the educational value, Ober says.

“The science of maple syrup — it is physics, botany, microbiology, chemistry, engineering. Everything comes together when you start running a sugar bush.”

You can learn those lessons whether you’re a large maple syrup producer or a hobbyist tapping trees in the backyard. Steven Solovey ’07 and Angela Rospert ’08, ’12 DVM brought their two young daughters to Maple Madness Days.

They live on a farm in Crestline, not far from the Mansfield sugar bush, and tap trees on their property, which has been in the family since 1875.

Solovey has long ties to sugaring.

“I use my grandfather’s kettle, and he lived to be 99 years old,” Solovey says.

Several years ago, Solovey enrolled in a maple syrup workshop hosted by Ohio State, and he stays up to date by reading the university’s maple blog.

At the Maple Madness Tour, Solovey wants to show his children how professionals use plastic tubing to carry sap versus the buckets he and his family tote to tap their trees.

He hopes to expand their understanding of how food comes from nature, not just from the grocery store.

Plus: “It’s like magic,” he says. “It starts out as a clear liquid with almost no taste, and then I boil it, and it changes color and turns into a sticky, sweet syrup.”

During the upcoming spring semester, 10 years after Ohio State students first identified the Mansfield sugar bush, the university will offer a new undergraduate course on the art and science of maple syrup production.

Not only will students get hands-on experience, they’ll learn a sustainable practice that Native Americans taught Ohio settlers long ago, a practice that Ohio State alumni can carry on in their own backyards and local communities.