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maple sugaring

Boiling sap to syrup at Jacobs family’s farm

Boiling sap to syrup at Jacobs family’s farm

Denny Jacobs and Bill Beebe keep a watchful eye on the boiling process that reduces sap to syrup.

Patrick L. Sullivan

FALLS VILLAGE — Maple syrup production was in full swing Monday morning, March 10, at the Jacobs family operation on Undermountain Road in Falls Village.

At 9 a.m. Denny Jacobs and Bill Beebe were hard at it. Jacobs said the goal for the day was to boil down 200 gallons of maple sap to just before the point where it’s maple syrup.

The last part of the process is done in a much smaller unit.

Asked about the ratio of sap to syrup, usually given at 40:1, Jacobs said “Everybody thinks it’s 40:1, but it depends. I think it’s probably more like 50:1, and we had one batch that was more like 80:1.”

Patrick L. Sullivan
Senior Reporter
Patrick Sullivan has been a reporter for The Lakeville Journal since 2004, covering everything from town meetings to local characters and the outdoors. He grew up in Northern Virginia but spent summers on Mount Riga in Salisbury, giving him a lifelong connection to the Northwest Corner. A graduate of Denison University, Patrick is also the author of Tangled Lines, the newspapers’ popular fly-fishing column—making The Lakeville Journal, as far as anyone knows, the only newspaper in Connecticut with a regular fly-fishing columnist. He once received a fan letter from England, which he considers sufficient evidence that his work has achieved international acclaim.
maple sugaring

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