2009 HARVEST:

Stardate 10/27/09: Well you've probably been waiting for those stats! Here you go: 2009 Stats: 63,000 gallons sap collected; 690 gallons pure organic birch syrup produced ... As of October 27th ... it's almost gone ... It's been a busy summer, and we have big news. We purchased property near Talkeetna Alaska and are building a new facility! Wow!! This is a huge step for us; one we've been thinking about and planning for 5 years; just waiting for that perfect spot. Yes, it does mean that we will make most of our syrup in 2010 in a new location ... still in the upper Susitna Valley, but on the road system. We will tap a new forest and have access to many more trees. We will finally be able to increase our production substantially, so that I don't have to say "NO" to anyone who wants syrup again! (many apologies to my friend Tage in Denmark). Our trees at Quiet Lake will appreciate their retirement as much as we appreciate them. I will look forward to relaxing times on the homestead instead of intense harvest seasons ... and maybe I'll get to retire someday too, among the birches that I love. Well, more on this later. In the meantime, enjoy the video that I finally uploaded on our homepage!

Stardate 5/14/09:
A quick update ... harvest ended yesterday; 19.5 days; totals for syrup production not yet in. But I can tell you this ... the syrup is very high in quality, somewhat low in quantity. The sap was very sweet 1.4 - 1.5% most of the harvest and made for awesome sweet, light first run syrup. The harvest was hampered by great weather - it was too sunny and warm! I felt like we were the only Alaskans wishing for cool cloudy days on those 70 degree scorchers! So Ma Nature had her way with us once again - this year, complete with volcanic ash from Mt. Redoubt eruptions that wreaked havoc with our equipment. Let's just say we're relieved it's over, and that we did not have a bust harvest! I'll put the stats out as soon as they are available; in the meantime, try our awesome 2009 First Run!!

Stardate 4/19/09:
With our warm spring weather (by Alaska standards anyway!)- up to 50 degrees during the day and freezing at night - the sap has started to run in earnest. We will start tapping our 4,000 trees tomorrow and hope to be finished in two days, so we can start the evaporator on Wednesday! The first syrup-making day is always challenging. The sap suckers are getting used to their sap routes and the blisters on their feet, and the rest of us - syrupmaking and maintenence crew - are ironing the kinks out of the system and doing all those last minute things that somehow were forgotten during the long month of preparation. Sometimes our memories are not jogged until we're actually into the process! Michael, Charlie, and I are all getting a little older ... that's our excuse anyway! First day is also usually our biggest sap days, since half the trees (the ones tapped the first tapping day) collect for two days! Generally a late night and a long day for all ... I will fly out to the homestead on Tuesday morning to head of the syrupmaking for about two weeks. I'll update upon my return ... we're doing our sap dances now in hopes of a sweet, lengthy, and relatively problem-free harvest!

Stardate 4/9/09:
Our 20th Sap Harvest "syrup season" is upon us! I find that number difficult to fathom! It means I have spent a large portion of my life in the pursuit of birch syrup, and my daughters are almost out of the house! Wow - Where does the time go? Reflections aside, we have the makings of a great 20th harvest, I'm happy to report. Our crew is made up of several of our most talented veterans of the sap trenches ... Beren, after an absence of 4 years, has returned for one last season before entering law school; and Robin and Jono - recently "off the ice" (a year in Antarctica) decided Alaska seemed like a warm alternative. Charlie, our mechanic/syrupmaker is back, and we seem to have lost count of his years. Sadly, Cisco - his blue heeler - passed on last month. We will all miss him - especially Chica, our husky mix. We are adding an extra "sap sucker" this year, for a total of 6! Jess, from maple country will be helping us string 200 trees with a tubing/gravity feed system - our experiment for this season. We hope to increase production this year with an additional 500 trees tapped. We decided to circle the wagons, and do all production on the homestead this year. That means I get to go "home" and make syrup this year, for at least the first half of the harvest! That is a good thing! Firewood is cut, and being split, a new bridge access built to new trees, old snowmachines fitted with new parts in hopes they will survive another season. It's a busy as a bee hive out there! I'll keep you posted!

Stardate 6/20/08: Happy Summer Solstice! It's hard to believe we're a month out from harvest and still scrambling to catch up! Well at least it's light all the time - makes working round the clock a little easier! Final statistics for our challenging, but successful, 2008 harvest:

2008 Season Stats:

• Sap harvested: 62,000 gallons raw sap
• Sap purchased: (roadhouse) 11,000 gallons
• Syrup produced: 732 gallons pure certified organic birch syrup
• Harvest dates: April 24th thru May 19th
• Length of season: 17 days (Roadhouse), 21 days (homestead)
• Number of taps: 4300
• Average sap/tree/day: .8 gallons
• Average syrup produced /tree: 21.75 ounces


Thanks to our fantastic 2008 crew, who didn't give up even when Michael said "this is just too hard..." Thanks Jules, Chris, Misty, Jeff, Ben, and of course Charlie - who had to be head syrupmaker this year and didn't even call me too often to consult - and made awesome birch syrup to boot!!

Stardate 5/20/08:
We made it! Michael was determined to get his 21 day harvest and that's exactly what he did. Harvesting until May 19th...that is the latest we have ever collected sap. Thanks to the powers that be, it DID stay nice and cool til the very end - we are thankful. Final numbers are not in yet, but it will be close to last year, we think. Our "roadhouse" harvest (in town) went a respectable 17 days, until May 10th, and produced a fine harvest. Using a diesel evaporator, instead of the wood-fired I am used to, was an interesting (and expensive!!) change. It's sure way easier (flick a switch - no fire to stoke), but I had to get used to the different heat and dynamics created by constant heat. I missed the wood, but as I was on my own part of the time it was just as well. On the other hand, Charlie - my syrupmaker on the homestead - ran the wood fired evaporator on his own after one of our crew had to leave. Now that's a challenge! The crew is taking the day off, trying to psyche themselves up for washing 3500 pails and lids...it was a tough harvest, but washing all those buckets is no picnic either. I sent supplies out today - including a fair amount of chocolate and a little beer...

Stardate 5/7/08:
For those of you wondering...we are still in the throes of harvest - our second latest ever. It began April 29th on the homestead and a bit earlier in town. Late harvests are generally quite intense; fast and furious ... and every day is a battle with spring break up making access to trees increasingly difficult. This year is no exception! We are hoping that the spring remains cool for another 10 days or so - so we might have a full harvest. Then bring on the Alaskan sunshine! Pure, certified organic birch syrup should be up on the site by this weekend! Hang in there!!

Stardate 3/24/08:
It's that time of year again, and our sap collectors are arriving from Wyoming, Minnesota, South Pole station, and Utah. It has been a warm March, but February was cold with a great deal of snow - so, while most Alaskans are ready for winter to be over, we are hoping for a long, cool spring! That's the best for a good, sweet harvest. In a monumental effort to increase production, Michael and I are dividing our forces and running two evaporators this year. We hope it works and that we're not completely gray by the time we're finished! I have sap collectors from Willow, Big Lake, Wasilla, and Palmer all ready to deliver sap to our satellite syrup production at our "Roadhouse". This will be a new experience for me - we've always collected all of it ourselves! Michael will run a crew on the homestead, as usual, and he will have 6 very qualified helpers. On top of it all we will have our inspection for organic certification on April 15th! It should be a good season. Stay tuned...

2007 HARVEST: Stardate 4/4/07:
As I write, we are preparing for our 18th harvest - I find that so hard to believe! My daughters, now almost 17 and 14, have grown up with five seasons - summer, fall, winter, spring, and "syrup season"! After record cold January and February, winter is finally loosening its grip; the sun feels warm, the days are long, and the eaves drip icy water on my neck as I head out the door in the afternoon. As the trees and ground begin to thaw, the sap will drip-drip-drip into our buckets - 3300 of them this year - and our "syrup season" will begin. We are tired of running out of syrup so, if the birches smile on us, we will increase production by about 30%. Our 2007 harvest birch syrup should be available by the first week in May. Enjoy the springtime, as we do, with its promise of light and warmth, new life, and abundant sweetness!

2007 HARVEST STATISTICS and REPORT: Stardate 6/4/07:
Wow! That was a whirlwind of a season! We started collecting on April 19th, and finished 21 days later, on May 9th. There was very little snow on the ground, so we parked the snowmobiles early, and moved on to collection using the "big rigs" - our Polaris 6 wheelers with tracks. It was a tough season on the 6 wheelers - it seemed that one or another was in the shop continually, with our esteemed mechanics, Charlie and Michael, underneath trying to diagnose and repair. We finally had to quit collection when two of our four machines were vying for attention - one with serious transmission issues, and the other with a cracked frame. No biggie! But big enough to shut down the operation. It was about time anyway. By then we had collected 60,500 gallons of sap from 3300 total trees, over the 21 days. From that sap, we made a whopping 640 gallons of syrup - greatly exceeding our expectations - with a sap:syrup ratio of about 95:1. Each tree produced an impressive 25 ounces of syrup. The trees were generous with their sap this year; and we thank them for that. We also have many thanks for our sap-sucking crew this year - Robin, JonO, Roselie, and Tom Pi - for sticking with it through one of our most difficult harvests in 18 years. We couldn't have done it without them!

2006 HARVEST STATISTICS:
Due to the cold spring, it was a little slow, very steady, and quite long - 22 days. Our first collection day was April 20th - also a bit late. We collected 40,000 gallons of sap and produced 430 gallons of syrup. Due to the cold season and ice in buckets, the sap was very sweet, resulting in a lower sap to syrup ratio and very sweet, light syrup. Try it; supplies will definitely be limited this year!

2004 HARVEST SEASON
Stardate 1/26/07...Obviously, we have been a little too busy to update this harvest page for, well, several years; but 2004 still represents our best harvest ever and a good snapshot of our unique remote birch sap harvest. Maybe this year I'll be able to update ... It's always good to be optimistic...

Our 2004 sap harvest was an average year in some ways, but extraordinary in others. We had an average 21 days, starting on our average start date of April 16th, and ended up with an average sap to syrup ratio of 97:1. The temperatures were a bit above average but did not cause us problems like the heat wave of 2002. What was not average was the quality of our crew and the wonderful syrup we made this year!

We were incredibly lucky to lure Beren Argetsinger back again for his third year. We promoted him from “Captain Ropak” to General Sapsucker and made sure he had plenty of good food, good beer, and ample phone time to his sweetie in New York. Lyndsey Larsen came to us from “Downtown Canada”, (better known as Saskatoon, Saskatchewan), as a volunteer hoping to learn the fine art of birch syrup production from the pros, and start his own operation someday in the Yukon.
Long time friend and Alaskan, Charlie LaForge, came up from Kenai for his third year as well, to get a break from Alaskan “city life” and find the true meaning of life – back to basics, making birch syrup in the bush.

This year we retired Sally, our long time friend and partner in this operation. She served twelve years in the sap trenches – long enough for even the hardiest of workers! She spent just under a week with us this year and then Charlie stepped in to take over the syrup-making duties with me. He proved to be a natural at the evaporator and in the syrup kitchen – and enjoyed his stints in the house kitchen as well, competing with Michael to create gourmet meals for the crew. We made truly exceptional syrup this year as well! In Sally’s absence, we needed just a bit more help, and recruited Thom Gage from Fairbanks to help us get over the hump. That rounded out our crew – along with daughters Hannah, who enjoyed a little mud while waited anxiously to return to town life, and Kaila, our good-cheer girl and cookie-maker extraordinaire. We can’t forget our beloved canine companions, Cisco and Chica, either. They provide comic relief and unconditional love when it is most needed!

Despite the usual array of problems and breakdowns, we tapped into the biggest and one of the best sap seasons we have ever had – 43,500 gallons collected over 21 days, our biggest harvest ever, by far. We processed 3000 gallons of sap into syrup on our biggest day! Now that was a record, and no easy feat! This weather again was a bit warm for springtime in Alaska, and did present a few problems…..
Snow levels were pretty low when we started, so the transitions from our snow machine collection rigs to our 6 wheeler collection rigs came very shortly after tree- tapping. There are always a few days in there where nothing really works very well. Once the frost went out of the ground, a little sooner than expected, we were getting stuck in the mud on our sap collecting forays. This transitional part of the season is not easy for anyone, not to mention the equipment! Quick bush repairs by Michael or Charlie (who can both switch from syrup maker to gourmet chef to mechanic with no problem) were a common occurrence this season.

Our sap log entry for Wednesday, April 21st gives a little snapshot of the life of a Kahiltna Birchworks Sapsucker: “Lyndsey has a bad day. What didn’t happen…pump died, spilled sap, forgot bails, stuck five times one run, ran over hose…….” And on Tuesday May 4th: “Thom lost a pump! Ripped clean off trailer when outline snagged on tire! He didn’t know it… just kept going. Beren found it buried in the mud…..”
As always, it was a challenging season, but all worked out well in the end, mostly due to our great help – and, of course, our awesome forest of birches! Where would we be without them? Once again we wondered… what else would we do during break-up in Alaska?

2004 Season Stats:

• Sap harvested: 43,500 gallons raw sap
• Syrup produced: 450 gallons pure birch syrup
• Harvest dates: April 16th thru May 6th
• Length of season: 21 days
• Number of taps: 2400
• Average sap/tree/day: .87 gallons
• Average syrup produced /tree: 24 ounces

Birch Syrup Production Promotes Sustainable Use of Alaska's Forest Resources.