Ever lengthening, warmer days are a sure sign that Spring has come to the North country. And although this transition time from winter to summer can be somewhat blah and muddy, for many people this is the sweetest time of the year. That's right it's sugar time!

Arnold Farm Sugar House located 700 feet from Route 201 on the Hilton Cemetary Road in Sandy Bay Township, began producing maple syrup in the spring of 2000 from sap collected through 29,000 taps. Over the next few years, Arnold Farm Sugarhouse will be expanding and within a few years will be producing syrup from 80,000 taps or more.

Arnold Farm Sugarhouse is located to be accessible from Route 201, as well as to be somewhat centrally located in relation to all of the different stands of sugar maple trees that will be tapped. Currently, there are two fully automatic pumping stations in operation in two separate locations. Sap from the maple trees tapped in each of these locations is piped towards the pumping stations, and from there, the pumping stations pull the sap through underground pipelines towards the sugarhouse. Underground pipelines are used for long distanced so that the sap remains cool during the day as it flows towards the sugarhouse, and so that it does not freeze solid in the pipelines overnight as it does in above ground pipelines. As more stands of sugar maple trees in other areas are tapped over the next few years, more pumping stations equipped with underground pipelines will be added.

A modern, commercial maple syrup operation starts the same as every other operation with a tap placed in a maple tree. Whether you use buckets or tubing, all operations use a tap. With the Arnold Farm Sugarhouse, the taps are connected to plastic sap pipelines, and with the aid of a vacuum system, the sap flows to the sugarhouse into large storage tanks, the sap flows into a reverse osmosis machine. The reverse osmosis machine concentrates the sugar content of the sap into 20% to 25% of the original sap volume, leaving 75% to 80% of the original volume to be pumped off as pure water. The concentrate from the reverse osmosis machine is pumped into an oil-fired evaporator and it is boiled until it reaches a temperature of seven degrees above the boiling point of water, which is the point when it becomes maple syrup.