Bearded, burly Tim Burton assembled a small crowd around a tall, moss-spackled hard maple tree just outside his log-walled sugarhouse, in southern Medora, Indiana. He dipped a cup into the tin bucket hanging from the sunlit south side of the tree and ladled out some cool, clear sap, sloshing a bit on the ground in the process, and then stuck a hydrometer into it to measure its sugar content.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
That Saturday in early March was the midpoint of the annual six-week sugaring season, and conditions were ideal for tapping the tree, one of some 700 maples Burton has on his farm, or “sugar bush,” about two miles outside of town. The temperature had warmed from a frigid night (22 degrees) to the low 50s under a brilliant afternoon sun-perfect freeze-thaw conditions to get the trees’ sap flowing. This also happened to be day one of the second annual National Maple Syrup Festival, which Burton hosts at the farm and at the nearby Medora Community School. Earlier in the day bluegrass bands had played onstage at the school and John Young, the world record holder in the vertical pancake toss (28.5 feet), had griddled flapjacks. Along the “sugar trail” Burton had cut through the woods, reenactors demonstrated how Native Americans and French settlers boiled sap down to sugar in kettles over open fires (sugar is easier to store than syrup, which can ferment and go bad). There’d also been a maple syrup cooking contest, judged by Chicago chefs Jason McLeod and Danny Grant from the Elysian Hotel, Paul Kahan of Blackbird and the Publican, Publican chef de cuisine Brian Huston, and me.
If the festival’s title sounds grandiose for Indiana—what about Vermont?—consider that up until the 1960s the state produced more maple syrup than any of the 17 others that make it. The Burtons began sugaring about four years ago not far from the land Angie’s great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Jacob Flinn settled in 1810. Three years later he was captured by a band of Potawatomie and forced to haul his sugar kettle north some 135 miles to the area around West Lafayette before making his escape.
This season—which ended on March 14 (the last day of the festival’s two-weekend run)—Burton figures he produced about 2,000 gallons of syrup. Grade A used to sell for more, but the prices for B have caught up to it, and with both at $20 for a 12-ounce bottle, he predicts that they’ll sell equally well at the Green City Market this year. He thinks this preference for the bolder grade might be his customers’ reaction to growing up on the caramel-colored corn syrup that bears little resemblance to real maple syrup, a handicap he’s somewhat conflicted about exploiting.