Today we’d like to introduce you to Marylin Humphrey.
Marylin, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
The first time Andy and I officially met was in high school welding class. Andy’s favorite joke is that (sparks flew). We became fast friends, and likely drove our shop teacher and fellow classmates nuts with our shenanigans.
After we started dating he invited me out to the farm to help make maple syrup. I had no idea how that worked but thought it was code to spend time together. Boy was I wrong! I hauled buckets up and down the muddy hills after dark, covered in bruises from falling and sore from all that heavy lifting. My parents were not happy I’d get home so late thinking we were up to mischief and didn’t believe me when I told them Andy tricked me into hard labor. (Haha). But I was hooked, we got the fever for maple and got excited about the future.
We work so well together, after getting married in 2014, we’ve nearly doubled our maple operation every year since.
What had started with 50 taps is now over 17,000. What had started with a shack in the woods is now a commercial sugarhouse and packaging facility, a maple equipment store and warehouse, a bulk syrup brokerage, and a custom installation business that astounds me to even imagine.
We have made a career with maple, a lifetime of goals, expanding our operation, encouraging other hobbyists, and helping the next generation get excited as we are about making sugar. We will never meet all our goals, but that’s ok, we are happily feeding the addiction.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There have been many obstacles along the way. There is no handbook (on the right way to make syrup). It is all trial and error, and gaining experience along the way, as what works for us may not work for our neighbor. It is a delicate balance of science, art, intuition, and patience. We have made plenty of mistakes, but learn every day how to be better.
It was a big decision to grow our operation. There is only a 2-month window every year to make maple syrup. In that time frame, we would sleep out in the woods for weeks at a time to make as much sugar as we could. The way we were going was not sustainable, but we loved the challenge. So we decided the sky was the limit.
Soon after, our equipment couldn’t handle the production we made so the next big decision was to start up an equipment store, mostly for the convenience of having everything on hand, but soon realized the need in our area for other hobbyists. It has grown so much over the last 3 years we can hardly keep up with the demand, so much so that we quickly noticed that there was untapped potential in the bulk syrup industry.
We are on the producer’s side as we understand every aspect of syrup since we started from nothing. We wanted to break up the monopoly of bulk buying in the area and pay more to the producer. Many obstacles came from these decisions. The maple syrup industry is small compared to other commodities. When you decide to shake things up in your state, larger corporations take notice and are not always supportive of small businesses. There have been multiple offers, appealing in their own way, but ultimately we wanted to do what was best for the producer and ourselves.
Weather is the biggest factor in our operation. It can make or break us every year. That in itself is the biggest obstacle we face.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about A&M Pure Maple Syrup?
We make pure maple syrup, by tapping trees in the spring (February-April) collecting the sap which is 2% sugar and 98% water on High vacuum tubing lines, and hauling it up to the sugarhouse where we boil the sap to make the finished syrup you use on pancakes. The finished syrup goes into 55 Gallon Drums and is preserved until we have orders for sale.
In the off-season, May and January, you can find us out in the woods, maintaining the lines from animal damage, in the sugarhouse bottling up the finished syrup for resale, or making the many maple products we have in stock. From our own Sweet Cream Pancake Mix Infused Syrups, Gift Boxes, Seasonings, and Sugar.
We give tours of our Farm, where we hobby farm a beef operation and 300 acres of crops. and every Spring we have an Open House, with free breakfast, games for the kids, and other community service efforts, to give back for all the support we get from our neighbors, friends, and family.
What sets us apart is that we are a one-stop shop for maple, We can set you up as a backyard producer with your family of 5-10 taps, or we can help you grow your sugarbush to commercial uses. We buy sap from the hobbyists that can’t cook it all, we buy bulk syrup and even barter equipment in the exchange, or even help you install the tubing for you, and give you tips to manage the woods properly for the overall health of the forest and efficiency in production.
We are proud of everything we do, we never leave a job half finished, and are excited to share our Pure Maple Syrup with you. You can taste the passion and the love in every drop.
We’d love to hear what you think about risk-taking.
Farming in general is a huge risk, most people don’t think maple syrup is farming, but it most definitely is. It is a commodity the same as every other source of food grown and harvested.
We depend on the weather the same, the season is so short, I would say it is more difficult than some crops like corn, and soybeans. (We don’t have GMO trees to withstand temperatures as they do for drought).
Since the industry is so small and a lot of people are uneducated about syrup, it is a struggle to get consumers to understand the cost of the product. It is expensive. It is hard work. The benefits of maple syrup are unbelievable in vitamins and minerals. but education is huge, and sorely missed.
Which you wouldn’t think would lead to risk but assuredly it is. With economic ups and downs, so does the need for an expensive product like syrup. Our investment is huge every year of the possibility that the season won’t be good enough in return. It is a gamble.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ampuremaplesyrup.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100066878297620
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK0zLnbGv2xaQKQF2E7dzLA
