Wildwood Ranch Maple Syrup

2019 Summary of the Wildwood Ranch Maple Syrup Operation
held at Kraemer Lake – Wildwood County Park

• 1800 taps
• 22,000 gallons of sap
• 510 gallons syrup
• 275 visitors
• 75 volunteer hours

Stearns County Parks would like to thank Tom, Shelly, and Ben Carlson along with all of their other volunteers for conducting the operation every year. Below is their summary of the 2019 season.

The spring of 2019 proved to be an exceptional maple syrup season! Sap and finished syrup records were made! At the same time, it was an exceptionally difficult season with all of the snow!

The tenth annual ”Snow Stomp” kicked off the season on February 16th with 35 people on snowshoes stomping trails along and around the vacuum tubing lines to provide easier access to the woods for line repairs and tapping of the trees. A few more snow events followed with more snow stomping needed!

We experienced a fairly normal start to the season. Trees were tapped on the 16th & 17th of March with sap collection starting soon after. The sap ran nearly every day for four weeks. In all, 1,800 taps yielded 22,000 gallons of sap collected and boiled off to make a over 500 gallons of syrup.

We had a beautiful warm day for our annual open house! Over one hundred people enjoyed visiting the sugar shack and observing maple syrup production in full swing! Tours on sap collection methods, reverse osmosis, evaporation, filtering and of course the finished product were given.

A big THANK YOU to all of our visitors and volunteer help during the season!

A few phenology notes that we record each year:

• Sandhill Cranes returned March 21st
• Resident Barred Owls nesting in the woods near the sugar shack February and March
• Frogs began to Chirp on April 6th
• Kraemer Lake ice out on April 20th