At the end of February, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey announced that March would officially be declared Massachusetts Maple Month. Fourth generation maple syrup producer Howard Boyden has been involved in making maple syrup all his life.
His father Ray Boyden built their existing sugarhouse in Conway, MA, in 1966. Before that, Howard’s grandfather and great-grandfather made syrup at another sugarhouse at the Boyden Farm.
Howard took over the existing South Deerfield Road business when his father passed in 1985 and has been running it ever since.
“It’s in my veins. I have to sugar every year. There’s no getting round it,” said Boyden. “I can’t remember ever not being involved.”
Though called Boyden Brothers Maple (as his father had it named), he is the sole brother of his generation running it.
Boyden is helped by his wife Jeanne Boyden and Yukon Charlie (the nickname of his nephew and full-time employee Charlie Boyden, after the Yukon Charlie brand aluminum snowshoes they wear tackling snow to set taps). On weekends, other family members come to help too.
Their maple syrup business is open weekends in March every year. They open again for Thanksgiving weekend through Christmas selling Fraser x Balsam Christmas trees that they raise. Last year they sold 150 trees.
They have a year-round wholesale business packaging and delivering their maple syrup to local stores. “If a regular walk-up customer wants some syrup, the customer knows all they have to do is call and we’ll put the syrup out for them and the customer will slip a check under the door,” Boyden said.
They also sell maple cream, candy, granulated sugar and gift boxes of maple products.
On March 21, the second day of spring, he was expecting a freeze overnight that would continue at least a week so that they could get a second sap run.
“This happens once out of every five years. Sometimes everything freezes. Sometimes everything gets warm,” like it did the beginning of March, he said. “Hopefully we’ll have a good run this week.”
He’d already boiled all the sap they had so far collected so he used the time between the next expected boiling to clean out the 32 sap tanks, a mix of different sizes of stainless steel or food grade plastic.
He has a total of 4,000 taps on the adjacent Boyden Farm, a 400-acre dairy farm, and on leased land in Conway. They aim for producing 1,000 gallons of syrup each season.
He had made 640 gallons of syrup so far, a very high quality syrup with a 60:1 ratio of sap to syrup, a different ratio than the usual 40:1 ratio. “It’s pretty lean sap,” said Boyden.
Howard Boyden with their signature maple cream and some of the awards won for their products produced at Boyden Brothers Maple. Photo by Laura Rodley
The biggest reason for this is “we are tapping maples in the woods on steep banks where the trees don’t get a large crown. We can’t tap on trees on the side of the road because all the old giant maples have died due to road salt,” he said.
They also can’t manage the placement of maples on rented land, where many varieties of trees compete for sunlight.
However, “gravity is a wonderful thing,” and tapping the maples on the hillsides allows the sap to easily run down to their sap-holding tanks.
This year they started tapping on Feb. 1, spending a lot of time in the woods on deep snow on snowshoes getting things ready by Feb. 15.
They boil the sap in a five-year-old 4-by-12-foot Leader Vortex evaporator. He burns about 12 cords of wood each season. He cuts the wood locally, mainly wind-felled trees.
“We are equal opportunity burners – whatever the wind blows over. The wind this year has been unprecedented – haven’t seen wind like this in the month of February ever,” said Boyden.
A weather report by Dave Hayes, “the Weather Nut,” who reports on his page at facebook.com/WesternMassWeather, noted that Feb. 17’s forecast alone included peak westerlies gusting 40 to 60 mph with scattered to numerous power outages expected. On March 21, Hayes reported wind gusts reaching 41 mph in Deerfield, which abuts Conway, and up to 48 mph elsewhere in Western Massachusetts.
“Boiling is a ton of fun for me,” said Boyden.
Seeing the resulting steam in the air attracts many visitors. School groups from Conway Grammar School across the street visit to see the sugaring process. They have already had the preschool and kindergarten in.
“That’s how you make new customers. I have people come here now as grandparents bringing their grandchildren who came here first in kindergarten,” Boyden said. “It’s a small town. I know them all. If I don’t, my wife does, that’s for sure.”
Boyden is a past president of the North American Maple Syrup Council (NAMSC) and a past president and currently on the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts Maple Producers Association. Boyden Brothers Maple has won many local and international awards, including first place at the 2022 NAMSC International Maple Conference Contest for both golden/delicate syrup and maple candy, and second for maple sugar and maple cream. Their golden/delicate syrup placed second in the 2024 NAMSC contest.
Boyden can’t wait to start boiling again. For more information, access massmaple.org/granulated-maple-sugar/boyden-brothers-maple.
by Laura Rodley
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