Bill D'Avignon with the Rocky Ridge Neighborhood Association visually checks the viscosity of maple syrup while boiling sap at the Rocky Ridge Sugar House in Mill Creek Park Saturday morning.

YOUNGSTOWN — On warm days in March, passersby near the Wick Recreation Area in Mill Creek Park may notice steam billowing off a building tucked in a grove and curiously check inside.

“The sugar house sits there basically idle for 11 months out of the year, so when they finally see it all opened up with steam pouring out, they’re very interested to know what’s going on,” said Nick Sarra, a Rocky Ridge neighborhood resident and volunteer syrup producer.

For about a decade, the Rocky Ridge Neighborhood Association has collected and boiled maple syrup in Mill Creek’s Charles S. Robinson Maple Grove.

Rocky Ridge Neighbors got the idea to tap the trees after hiking near the grove, which was planted in 1951 and named for a former Mill Creek Park commissioner.

“People are very surprised that there’s even a maple grove there,” Sarra said of the Mill Creek Park production.

The Neighbors have a handshake agreement with the park, Sarra said. He estimated that this year, they have approximately 130 taps in 90 trees. They collect sap in bags mounted to the trees and transport it by bucket to the Rocky Ridge Sugar House, located in the grove, Sarra said.

This year, like most, the Neighbors tapped around Valentine’s Day.

On average, the Rocky Ridge Neighbors produce about 500 eight-ounce bottles of maple syrup, which are sold at Fellows Riverside Gardens, Lanterman’s Mill and a few other locations around the city.

He said the syrup is a “means to an end” — the funds accelerate community development in the neighborhood, which includes projects such as public artwork and beautification around the neighborhood and the Mahoning Avenue corridor.

For some, though, maple syrup is a full-time job.

At the Cermak’s Middlefield farm, some 2,200 trees are connected by more than 12 miles of tubing — but when John Cermak is asked about the length on tours, his answer is always, “I don’t want to know.”

“He doesn’t want to know how many miles he’s walking,” said Pam Cermak, John’s mother. She said John and his father, Jim, don’t just go to each tree once to tap it — they go back again and again throughout the months-long sap season to check for leaks and then again at the end of the season to clean up.

The Cermak’s system at Sugarbush Creek Farm involves more than 8 miles of lateral 5/16-inch tubing running from trees into more than 4 miles of 1-inch main line tubing, which takes sap into the sugar house with the assistance of gravity and a vacuum pump.

Jim Cermak’s goal for production is one gallon per tap, or approxumately 2,200 gallons, Pam Cermak said.

“He hasn’t reached that goal,” she said, adding that typically with tubing you can make about one-half gallon of syrup per tree, and sometimes a bit more with a good vacuum pump. Collection by bags or buckets yields less — about a quart of syrup per tap, Cermak said.

It takes 40 to 50 gallons of sap to make syrup. Most sap has 2 to 3 percent sugar content, while syrup is about 66 percent sugar — which is why so much water has to be boiled off.

The Cermaks tapped in January this year, though the sap didn’t run until February.

“We need freezing and thawing,” explained Pam Cermak. Ideal conditions are when temperatures are below freezing at night and over 40 degrees during the day.

About 25 miles east in Kinsman, Jerad Sutton of Sutton’s Maple Syrup said the sap has been running for a few weeks. Thursday afternoon, like most afternoons this time of year, Sutton boiled sap on his diesel fuel evaporator.

“When it runs, we boil,” Sutton said. “You lose quality the longer you keep it.” He said makes between 35 and 40 gallons an hour on his evaporator and bottles syrup within 24-hours of its component sap leaving the tree.

Sutton has about 4,500 taps and like the Cermaks, he uses tubing and a vacuum pump, as well as well as a monitoring system to track vacuum levels and temperatures.

Cermak and Sutton both said it’s too early to say if this will be a good year for production. The season can go into April if freezing and thawing continues.

Last year was a below-average production season for both farms, and for producers across the U.S. and Canada.

Last November, Canadian group Quebec Maple Syrup Producers announced it was releasing half of its strategic stockpile, about 50 million pounds of syrup, to mitigate the low yield and a 21 percent jump in worldwide demand, according to a NPR article from that time. Quebec produces approximately 70 percent of the world’s maple syrup.

On average in Ohio, some 900 farms produce around 100,000 gallons of syrup yearly, making Ohio the fourth or fifth highest producer among the 12 maple-producing states, according to the Ohio Maple Producers Association.

There’s room for growth in the industry as Ohio’s demand for maple products outpaces its current production.

Maple syrup is considered a “super food” for its natural antioxidants, minerals and vitamins, according to the association.

It is also a natural sweetener that can be used in place of sugar, and during the Civil War, it was used in abolitionist Ohio in place of cane sugar to protest slave labor used in the South.

avugrincic@tribtoday.com