Staff photo / R. Michael Semple Analyse Sutton, 18, of Gustavus, samples freshly produced maple syrup at the Sutton’s Maple Syrup sugar house in Kinsman. Jerad Sutton said the sap has been running for a few weeks.

MIDDLEFIELD — 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,” Pam Cermak, John’s mother, said. 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 monthslong 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 eight miles of lateral 5/16-inch tubing running from trees into more than four miles of 1-inch main line tubing that 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 around 2,200 gallons, Pam Cermak said.

“He hasn’t reached that goal,” she said, adding typically with tubing you can make around a 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 — meaning excess water has to be boiled off.

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

“We need freezing and thawing,” Pam Cermak explained. Ideal conditions are when temperatures are below freezing at night and warmer than 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 per 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 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 in 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 an NPR article from that time. Quebec produces approximately 70 percent of the world’s maple syrup.

In Ohio, some 900 farms produce about 100,000 gallons of syrup on an average year, making it the fourth- or fifth-highest producer among the 12 maple-producing states, according to the Ohio Maple Producers Association.

The industry has room to grow as Ohio’s demand for maple products outpaces its current production.

After all, Ohioans like their local products.

“People get excited about Youngstown home-grown products,” Nick Serra of the Rocky Ridge neighborhood in Youngstown said.

For about a decade, the Rocky Ridge Neighborhood Association has tapped trees in Mill Creek Park’s Charles S. Robinson Maple Grove, planted in 1951 and named for a former Mill Creek Park commissioner.

Sarra estimated this year, the Rocky Ridge Neighbors have about 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.

“People are very surprised that there’s even a maple grove there,” Sarra said of the Mill Creek Park production. On warm days when Rocky Ridge volunteers boil sap, many passersby coming to or from the Wick Recreation Area stop to watch the steam billow off the sugar house.

“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,” Sarra said.

Sarra said on average, the Rocky Ridge Neighbors produce approximately 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 like public artwork and beautification around the neighborhood and the Mahoning Avenue corridor.

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

It also is 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.

Many local maple syrup farms are open for tours today and next weekend for the 2022 Maple Madness Tour. A list of participating maple producers is available at www.ohiomaple.org.