![]() For the next hundred years you're going to be pulling sap. You're building canopies for birds and insects and you're going to take a high dollar crop. If you planted that into maples and planted forests of maples, not only are you pulling carbon out of the air, there's no more irrigation, there's no more of this heavy equipment running over the ground. "My idea is to start taking secondary farm land. ![]() More is written about how to kill them than how to grow them," explained McLeod. "We've cut down our maples trees as firewood. Neil's may be the first commercial Bigleaf syrup producer on the west coast, but they certainly don't want to be the last, because if more people are making maple syrup it will actually benefit the environment. On the west coast it's doing well," said McLeod with a laugh. I imagine on the east coast they won't like it as much. "There's a night and day difference if you taste my syrup over east coast. The syrup is lighter with more vanilla notes at the start of the run and darker with heavier caramel flavor towards the end. Since McLeod is making syrup in small batches, the flavor and color of the product changes throughout the four months of the year when he can collect sap. "From there it goes through reverse osmosis, into a concentrate tank and into my evaporator." It runs in there, fills up, a pump comes on and pumps it over to my sap holding tank," McLeod explained to me at one of the sugar bush locations on the property. "Okay, runs through this line to an extractor, which is under vacuum. In all, they've got 15-20 miles of sap collection lines running through four different sugar bush locations around the area. ![]() That's when McLeod, Day and their small team got serious about the science of sap collection. The only response I got was like 'How much can you get me?' That was the only response. "It was actually Canlis, we got to know them really well. "I look them some samples and said 'Hey, you've got to try this'," said Day. But Day also runs a dynamic, multi-faceted farm, and has relationships with a number of restaurants in Seattle and on the west coast. McLeod started producing enough syrup for 40-50 bottles a year, handing them out to friends and family. "At first ) was just tapping trees and carrying all these jugs home and over a big fire," added Delight. He went out with a drill and realized at the right time does drip, got on Amazon, ordered some supplies and went from there," said Day. "It intrigued Neil enough that he was like 'Heck, I'm going to give this a shot'. "So the logical thing was I read an article on Bigleaf Maples from the 70's where the state said could be done, but financially it wasn't worth the effort." Then the big hive collapse came and I lost all my bees," explained McLeod. That all changed when McLeod decided to give it a go about a decade ago. Most folks didn't think our region's weather patterns would support commercial syrup production, because it's generally much warmer during the winter than east coast syrup hot spots like Vermont and New Hampshire. If you're thinking to yourself, "wait, maple syrup can be made in Washington?", you're not alone. Their son, Day, is the company's frontman handling, among other things, marketing and distribution. McLeod was the one who first started making syrup, with help from his wife, Delight. "We're the only big leaf maple syrup producer, commercial producer in the western United States," said Neil McLeod.Īt Neil's Bigleaf Maple Syrup, official titles aren't really a thing. "It's a maple syrup made from big leaf maple trees." ![]() "Neil's Big Leaf is a maple syrup," explained Devin Day. Perfect conditions for making maple syrup. When that happens, the sap starts running. What they need is a typical late winter day in this area, cold overnight, just warm enough during the day to thaw everything out. Two hours north of Seattle in Acme, Washington, one family is watching the weather forecast closely.
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