The Official U.S. Maple Syrup Almanac 2014 2nd Edition | Page 10

Chris Daniel collected butternut sap in buckets this first year. Here he examines one with fiance Brittany Elder, sister Chelsea, and mom Kelly. Daniel’s Red Truck Farm in Havelock, Quebec, is experimenting with a new sort of syrup: butternut.

tapping
the

BUTTERNUT

BY KATHERINE CERRONE

HAVELOCK, Quebec — Quebec’s
60 million pound strategic maple syrup
reserve helps keep the market stable,
but can hinder many sugarmakers from
expanding, leaving one young sugarmaker to instead experiment with a new
crop—butternut.
26-year-old Chris Daniel of Red Truck
Farm and his family have been tapping
a small stand of butternuts, otherwise
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known as white birch, and have had some
great results.
“I’d been reading a lot about birch and
walnut syrup, and I realized that butternut trees are in the same family. I figured
I’d tap a few,” Daniel said. “I found the
sugar content was pretty comparable to
maple, about three to three and a quarter brix.”
Daniel scoured his property for the
endangered butternut trees, tapping 44

of them with buckets.
“Our evaporator is way too large, it’s 5
by 16. So I ended up boiling the sap in
a pot on a propane burner,” Daniel said.
Daniel is one of several sugarmakers
looking for new and exotic syrups to
market.
Michael Farrell, director of Cornell
University’s Uihlein Maple Center in
Lake Placid, N.Y. has been tapping a
host of 16 butternut trees in Albany,
U.S. Maple Syrup Almanac

2014