WESTHAMPTON — Waving the crowd toward his new wood-fired evaporator, Stephen Holt reached out and touched the shining machine’s steel door with his bare hand. A few of those watching — those closest to Holt — gasped in amazement. They expected Holt, the owner of Steve’s Sugar Shack , to be instantly burned. Instead, he smiled.
“Before, doing that would burn your skin right off,” said Mike Robbins, Holt’s neighbor and friend.
On Sunday, Holt invited family, friends and locals to a test boiling at his business, located at 34 North Road in Westhampton. Holt was trying out his new maple-syrup producing machine, the Tornado, built by Dominion & Grimm Inc. The machine burns wood in an airtight chamber, which is much safer than Holt’s previous setup. The efficiency of the machine, however, is the reason Holt is so excited.
Holt has been in the maple sugaring business since 1976, when the technology for turning sap into maple syrup sometimes consisted of little more than a bucket sitting above a fire. In 2001, he opened Steve’s Sugar Shack, a small restaurant that serves breakfast and brunch on weekends during the maple sugaring season — typically from the last week of February to the first week of April.
The property, which also includes Holt’s home, sits on the edge of a large forest, where Holt has 1,000 taps for maple syrup production. The taps channel raw sap from maple trees through pipes and down into a 3 by 10 foot machine in the restaurant building. There, the sap is heated and filtered, finally becoming maple syrup.
Holt’s new machine — which he received in April — still only takes up 30 square feet of space, but uses less wood and makes more maple syrup in a given amount of time. The machinery Holt used from 2001 until now could handle 70 gallons of sap at one time, processing it into 1.5 gallons of maple syrup per hour. His new machinery takes 210 gallons of sap and turns it into 4 to 5 gallons of maple syrup per hour. Even better, the new machine requires less labor to run.
“I used to add wood every seven minutes,” said Holt. “Now, I only need to do it every 35 minutes, and it’s the same amount of wood I’m putting in each time. I used to cut, stack, dry and move all that wood all around.
“I had 22 cords of wood in this room right here to keep things going,” said Holt, gesturing toward a room with almost no wood in it. “I might even get a little bored now.”
The Tornado’s improved efficiency not only means less hard work for Holt, but it actually makes the machine more environmentally friendly. Holt says that the amount of smoke coming from his machine and flowing up into the air will be more than cut in half.
“It’s like a car; the less gas it burns, the less pollution there is,” said Richard Chapman, a frequent customer at Steve’s Sugar Shack who came to the machine’s inauguration to take photos.
“The energy savings are huge, which is why I was able to get this,” said Holt. “Twenty-two cords of wood putting smoke up in the air is now eight cords of wood, and the smoke is much cleaner.”
Holt’s newest addition to his maple syrup business was made possible by the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources, which gave Holt a grant to pay for the machine.
After paying to have his production system evaluated, Holt received a report detailing how he could upgrade it. He applied for a grant from the department to get the Tornado, which would have cost Holt $26,000. The department gave Holt a grant which covered 100 percent of the machine’s cost.
“I’ve been Steve’s first customer in the morning every year for the last 10 years,” said Mark Gould, who comes to Steve’s Sugar Shack every weekend morning it’s open, at 6:45 a.m. “This is pretty impressive,” he said, nodding at the new Tornado.
Holt believes reactions like Gould’s are precisely the reason he was given such a large grant. According to Holt, the department wants customers to notice the new machinery, spread the word and inspire others to buy the more environmentally friendly equipment. At Steve’s Sugar Shack, breakfast-goers can sit down and eat pancakes, and only a few feet away they can see the machinery that’s making the maple syrup they’re eating. Because of that, Holt says word of his Tornado will get out in no time — including to other maple syrup producers.
“People come here and it’s not just about the breakfast. They socialize, they see what’s going on and how the syrup is made and then they tell other people about it. We have three sugar makers here today, for example, that can see this thing in action. They know if they invest in one they will make their money back,” said Holt. Speaking of the state agriculture department he said, “They gave it to us because we will show the public and other people will buy these much cleaner evaporators.”
The 1,000 taps pulling sap from maple trees on Holt’s property enable him to produce about 160 gallons of maple syrup each season. He says that this number should be much higher — around 250 gallons of maple syrup per season — and that changing environmental conditions have kept his production levels down.
According to Holt, there are two detrimental developments. First, the sugaring season, he says, is getting warmer each year on average. The best temperature for sap, which is perishable, is around 40 degrees Fahrenheit. When the season has too many warm days, sap can start to go bad before it is turned into maple syrup.
The second development, Holt says, is too much acid rain, which acidifies soil and is unhealthy for maple trees.
However, Holt describes the grant and the new machine as “kind of a win, win and win” situation in regards to both maple sugar production and the environment. Not only will there be less smoke coming from Steve’s Sugar Shack, but Holt says that he hopes to put another 1,000 taps in maple trees on the property.
This would bring Holt’s total amount of taps to 2,000, a feat he claims is possible due to the efficiency of the Tornado in processing large amounts of sap at a time. Holt says he is excited about the prospect of raising his production levels; he always runs out of maple syrup during the season, and has to buy more from other producers.
Holt says he doesn’t mind buying maple syrup from other people, and that not running out “would be a far, far worse business problem.”
“All of us who make syrup have problems making enough product. People come and eat and say, ‘Wow, it tastes so much better than what I’m used to.’ Then they’ll buy another three bottles of it on their way out the door,” said Holt. “With this machine, if I can satisfy more people with our syrup we make here, great.”