SWEET SPOTS

For most people, early spring means daylight lasts just a bit longer, and perhaps the red-wing blackbirds make their way back to the neighborhood. But for farmer Howard “Gibby” Fountain, it’s all about the sweets.

“We have about 3,000 taps [to gather maple sap],” he says. “Today we brought in about 1,200 gallons.” Fountain, the owner of Spring Hill Sugar House, in Exeter, has been tapping trees, gathering raw sap and boiling it down to make the sweet stuff for more than 30 years.

A chance encounter with some Vermont tapping equipment was Fountain’s inspiration. He began by buying a few pieces just for fun and simmering the result on a wood stove. Fountain was hooked.

“Before that, I didn’t really know anything about making maple syrup. I remember hearing in school about Native Americans doing it and introducing it to the Europeans, but that was just a short chapter.”

Lorén Spears, executive director of the Tomaquag Museum, in Exeter, adds more to that “short chapter.”

“Native peoples regarded maple syrup as a wonderful sign of spring. People would go away from the village to camps, where they would set up the ‘muhkuk,’ the birch-bark container used to hold the sap of the tree. That sap would be put into a wooden container to be heated and paddled back and forth to help it condense. The sap was called ‘wukoni neep,’ meaning ‘sweet water.’ It was important as a first sign of spring, as well as being a gift from the Creator. Tribal members could add it to cornmeal for travel, and to make journey cakes, now better known as jonnycakes.”

The basic process of creating syrup hasn’t changed much in hundreds of years, Fountain says. A sugar maple or red maple that is a foot in diameter is roughly 40 years old, and suitable for tapping.

Fountain uses a cordless drill to make a hole about an inch deep and inserts a spile, which looks a bit like a spike. Within seconds of tapping, sap begins to drip out. For the trees on his property, Fountain hangs a bucket from the spile to gather the sap.

In larger stands, he attaches a hose system to multiple trees, which carries the sap to a container, thus eliminating the need to empty multiple buckets. The tubing system enables him to run the operation on his own.

Once the sap is brought to the sugar house, it’s put through an evaporator, in this case resting above a wood fire. There the water in the sap will slowly be boiled off until the right sweetness is achieved. Depending on the sophistication of the evaporator, it’s a process that can take anywhere from two to 10 hours.

After that, each batch is graded by color, matching an industry standard. The darker the color, the higher the concentration of flavor. Fountain mainly sells Grade A Robust, the sort found on an average breakfast table.

He says he never expected to be the farmer he is now.

“My intentions were not to sell it. I just wanted to make maple syrup. But people kept stopping by wanting to buy some, and the interest was there, so we started to expand. To keep up with demand, we built this building [which houses the evaporator and the containers of syrup for sale]. We just kept tapping more and more trees.

“My goal was to tap 1,000 taps. Right now, we’re at 3,000. It just kind of got out of hand, you might say.”

Fountain’s wife and three daughters helped out years ago, but today their “bucket hauling” days are over, though his wife, Ginny, makes candy and one adult daughter handles the social media.

For the Narragansetts, along with other Rhode Island tribes, harvesting syrup is an event that continues on a small scale to pass on tradition.

“Whether you’re hunting or harvesting, you share with everyone. It’s a lesson and a blessing for everyone,” Spears says. “The sugaring parties would be intergenerational, with the young people who were learning going with the elders who would be teaching. Those knowledge-keepers, those culture-bearers are still passing on the traditions today.”

Fountain still loves harvesting maple syrup, and part of the reason is surprising: its unpredictability.

“You can’t control the process. We’re able to control so many things. In farming, if you get a drought, you can irrigate. But with maple sugaring, you can’t make it freeze, you can’t make it thaw. It’s interesting.”

Spears laughs when asked how far back the tradition reaches for her people.

“Since time immemorial! As long as there was maple in your ecosystem, you were going to tap those trees.”

There are many places around the state to obtain Rhode Island-made maple syrup. Some locations may hold sugaring demonstrations as well, though those are weather-dependent. Call the owner or check social media before you go.