By Tom Latek
Kentucky Today
You may think of maple syrup as being produced in northern states, but Kentucky has over 100 tapping the trees, and agriculture officials declared February as Maple Syrup Month in the state, at a farm in Shelbyville.
“Maple syrup production has a storied history in Kentucky,” said Ag Commissioner Jonathan Shell. “Through the years, production may have lessened but it’s making a resurgence and Kentucky is certainly blessed to see that. It adds that sweetness to Kentucky agriculture.”
In Kentucky, maple syrup production can be traced back to Native Americans long before Europeans arrived, according to the Kentucky Maple Syrup Association (KMSA). However, Native Americans used the tree sap to create sugar, not syrup. Settlers adopted the practice but modernized it and made sugar and syrup from the sap.
The practice trickled off until the 1940s when sugar was rationed and many rural Kentuckians went back to the practice of tapping trees for sap and making their own sweeteners to cope with the shortage. But when times got a little easier, many stepped away from the tree tapping practice.
Today, however, Kentucky is seeing yet another resurgence in maple syrup production. Farmers are harnessing modern technology, a changing economic landscape, and that same entrepreneurial spirit that brought Europeans to Kentucky, to tap into the abundance of maple trees in the state to bring Kentucky maple syrup back to the table.
“While Kentucky sits just south of traditional maple regions, our forests are full of maple trees representing a largely untapped resource with the potential to grow the state’s agricultural economy through syrup production,” said John Duvall, KMSA president.
KMSA boasts a growing membership of about 50 producers from Pike County in Eastern Kentucky to Graves County in Western Kentucky and all points in between. Through educational events and invitations from members to tour their properties, the Association works to spread the word and grow maple syrup production in Kentucky.
Those efforts have been aided along the way by the University of Kentucky Forestry Extension, UK’s Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, and the Kentucky Division of Forestry.
Although there are more than 100 maple syrup producers operating across the state, many of them small family farms, Kentucky’s large forested areas poise the state for growth in the industry aligning with Kentucky’s goals of sustainable agriculture, agritourism and value-added farm products.