Category: Central Evaporator Plants

Mountain Meadow Farms: Somerset County’s Modern Central Evaporator Plant

By Matthew M. Thomas

Mountain Meadow Farms was a gigantic maple syrup operation and game farm that operated in Somerset County, Pennsylvania in the 1960s and 1970s. Somerset County is known for its prominence and history as a maple syrup producing area in Pennsylvania. What made Mountain Meadow Farms unique, both in general and in Somerset County in particular, was that rather than being a small family sugaring operation that grew over time, Mountain Meadow Farms was created from scratch as a new operation on a scale not previously seen with the most modern technology and design available at the time.

1974 advertisement for Mountain Meadow Farms from The Republic out of Meyersdale, PA.

The Farms began in 1964 when Blaine “Bud” Walters and his wife Geneva purchased an existing game farm in the hills of Somerset County about two miles north of the village of New Baltimore, Pennsylvania. The Walters were the owners of the successful Walters Tire Service in the town of Somerset. Started in 1941, Walters Tire Service focused on manufacturing, retreading, and selling large size tires for road building equipment and servicing large trucks used in the Pennsylvania coal industry.

Mountain Meadow Farms had its own custom-designed lithographed metal syrup cans. A popular can among syrup can collectors.

According to one account, it was the Walters farm manger Gerald Grasser, who came up with the idea of making maple syrup. As the Walters’ son Jimmy Walters tells it, “Bud never did anything small. When they bought the farm it already had pheasants. There were two pens of pheasants when they bought it and they added turkeys and cattle. There were lots of maple trees so it made sense to tap those.” In addition to pheasants and turkeys, there were chuckers too. Cattle was usually around 300 head, but at one point with calves and heifers, it got up to close to 1000 head which required a lot of feed and work with Walters installing big Harvestore silos and automated feeding machines.

Mountain Meadow Farms sugarhouse in 1967. Photo from March 30, 1967 Bedford County Press article.

When Walters settled on the idea of starting a maple operation around 1963, over the next two years he promptly did everything he could to learn about the maple syrup business. For example, in 1965 he attended Maple Industry Conference in Philadelphia and when it became known just how large of an operation he was planning, he was put in touch with Adin Reynolds of Reynolds Sugar Bush, in Aniwa, Wisconsin, at that time the largest maple sugaring operation in the world. In addition to being able to offer Walters practical advice on setting up and running an operation of this size, the Reynolds Sugar Bush was an equipment dealer for the Vermont Evaporator Company and in the fall of 1965 made the sale to Walters of three 6 x 20’ oil fired evaporators along with all the requisite piping, tanks, and finishing equipment, as well as tapping supplies, plastic tubing and bags for collecting sap from around 20,000 trees. A brand new, 50 x 110 foot, state of the art sugar house was built at a cost of $75,000, complete with finishing area, candy making room, and sales area.

View of Mountain Meadow Farms sugarhouse sales room. Courtesy of Mark Ware and the Somerset County Historical Center.

In all likelihood, the Reynolds encouraged Walters to focus not only on tapping his many thousands of trees, but also to initiate a plan to get local farmers and families to gather and sell sap to him, similar to how the Reynolds operated their many Central Evaporator Plants in Wisconsin. The Walters made purchasing sap a big part of their operation right from the start. In the spring of 1966 in their first year of operation, they tapped 17,000 of their own trees and bought sap from 8,000 trees tapped by others in the vicinity. In the following years Walters increased his sap buying efforts bringing in sap from 25,000 trees paying 5 cents a gallon for delivered sap and 4 cents per gallon for sap that was picked up. As Jimmy Walters recalled, the farm had a mini fleet of tank trucks to pick up and haul sap along with four 10,000 gallon open tanks for sap storage. The farm was also able to enlist the efforts of a number of local 4-H clubs and scout groups to taps trees and gather maple sap, a valuable fundraiser for their organizations.

Mountain Meadow Farms new sugarhouse, circa 1966. Courtesy of Mark Ware and the Somerset County Historical Center.

The Walters were new to the maple business, but they quickly made it known that they manufactured a good product, taking home a number of awards for their maple candy and confections in the judging at the county maple festivals. Despite their newness to the maple industry, Bud Walters’ growing role as an industry leader was recognized and in 1969 he was elected to the Board of Directors of the Somerset County Maple Syrup Producers. In 1970 Bud Walters was crowned county Maple King based on the performance of Mountain Meadow Farms maple products at the festival. Rightly so, Bud acknowledged that that award was only possible because of his wife’s efforts and it really should go to her. However, there were certainly some maple producers from the area who were suspicious and resentful of his approach and rapid success.

Geneva Walters in 1970 displaying some of her marketing packages in the Mountain Meadow Farms sales room. From March 30, 1970 article in Somerset, PA’s Daily American.

The farm sold most of its products through direct sales and mail order sales and through accounts with a number of restaurants and a few retail locations in Pittsburgh. Mail order sales piggy backed on their sale of game birds with a special package of a smoked pheasant and a fresh pheasant and maple syrup. In addition to making syrup and candy, and encouraging the use of creative and attractive packaging, Geneva Walters was a strong proponent of expanding the range of products that could be made and marketed with maple syrup. Related to that, Jimmy Walters shared that his mother was so influential in introducing new maple products, such as a maple syrup based salad dressing, that the Somerset County maple festival was forced to add more categories for judging beyond the traditional syrup, sugar, and candy. Jimmy added that this was one of his parents most important contributions, expanding the range of maple products being made and opening folks’ eyes in the county to other ways to sell and make maple syrup.

View of the USDA Eastern Utilization Research Lab experimental reverse osmosis sap concentrator in use at Mountain Meadow Farms 1969 and 1970, Courtesy of Mark Ware and the Somerset County Historical Center.

As a large operation focused on efficiency and cutting-edge technology, it was chosen in 1969 as the test site of the USDA’s Eastern Utilization Research Lab experimental Reverse Osmosis (R.O.) system. C.O. Willits and his colleagues from USDA’s Philadelphia Lab had developed a portable R.O. unit for testing in real-world sugaring operations. The previous season it was tested at the Sipple sugarbush in Bainbridge, NY but it was decided that the amount of sap available from the Sipple sugarbush for running through the R.O. was insufficient to really measure the R.O.’s performance. Instead, the lab researchers needed a larger operation like Bud Walters’ to really test how well it processed sap. The USDA test R.O. was operated at Mountain Meadow Farms again the following season, contributing valuable information to the USDA labs development and improvement of reverse osmosis as a viable technology for the maple syrup industry.

View of the entrance to the Mountain Meadow Farms sugarhouse. Note the reverse osmosis unit inside. Courtesy of Mark Ware and the Somerset County Historical Center.

Making syrup from 40,000 to 45,000 taps in the 1960s and 1970s positioned Mountain Meadow Farms as arguably the second largest maple operation in the world, second only to the Reynolds Sugar Bush in Wisconsin.  By 1974 the farm was advertising itself to be “The Largest and Most Modern Central Evaporating Plant in the World!” and was clearly helping push and pull the maple industry to a new level of technological sophistication. But it did come with costs. According to Jimmy Walters, the farms had fairly high overhead with payroll to meet and little actual profit coming in. Many of the business ventures the Walters were involved with, including Mountain Meadow Farms were operating on loans and credit and at that time interest rates were relatively high at around 20-21%.  The last season of the Mountain Meadow Farms maple syrup making operation was the spring of 1977. When the costs of operation became too great Bud Walters decided to sell and attempted to keep the sugaring operation together and sell it as a package to an interested buyer. Unfortunately, at that time, the scale of the operation was simply too large for any potentially interested buyers.  In May 1978 the farming and sugaring equipment of the farm were sold at auction and the Mountain Meadow Farms ceased to operate. Bud and Geneva Walters passed the tire business to their son Jimmy in 1978 and enjoyed retirement. Bud passed away in 1990 and Geneva in 1995.

 

Special thanks to Mark Ware, Executive Director of the Somerset County Historical Center and to Jimmy Walters, son of Bud and Geneva Walters, for their assistance and sharing of personal memories and materials.

Holbert Brothers Maple Syrup at Mille Lacs Lake

You can read my latest maple history contribution to the June 2021 newsletter of the Minnesota Maple Syrup Producers’ Association at this link or by clinking on the image below.

The article tells the story of the maple syrup operation started by Sherman and Pat Holbert in the maple woods around Mille Lacs Lake in east central Minnesota following the end of World War II. Starting in 1946, in a few short years the Holbert brothers maple operation went from nothing to what was probably the largest operation in the country at that time, making syrup from 28,000 taps.  In addition, the Holberts became one of the first maple equipment dealers west of Michigan. Less than ten years after it got started, the Holberts shifted their business focus to other things. The operation closed its doors, the evaporators and gathering equipment were sold, and the syrup plant was converted to a roadside tourist attraction and gift shop.

Click on the image of the article above for a PDF of the full story.

Sherman Holbert’s New Approach to Maple Syrup Making in Minnesota in the 1940s and 1950s

In the broader world of maple syrup making, Minnesota has always been viewed as something of a backwater, with obvious reasons. There are far fewer maple syrup makers in that state than most of the rest of the maple producing region and the size of operation and volume of syrup made is considerably less.

However, being on the periphery and outside of the core of the maple world can have the advantage of not being as conditioned by or concerned with conventional approaches, thus freeing one up to think and act a little differently.  One example of that from occurred in Minnesota in the 1940s and 1950s, where one man, Sherman Holbert, took a few risks and decided to try a different model for making maple syrup.

I was able to interview Holbert in 2002  at his Mille Lacs Lake home when he was in his late 80s to learn more about his maple operation and how it came to be, and just as quickly disappeared.

The article I wrote telling this story was recently published in the July 2018 edition of Minnesota History magazine. I am happy to share a PDF version of the article at this link here or by clicking on the image of the article above.

Print copies of the article and magazine can be purchased from the Minnesota Historical Society website.

 

The Central Evaporator Plant in Wisconsin Maple History

This article originally appeared in a 2005 edition of the Wisconsin Maple News.

The 1940s and 1950s were a time of invention and innovation in the maple industry.  One of the innovations brought to the industry by Wisconsin was the Central Evaporator Plant.  Initiated by Wisconsin’s own Maple King, Adin Reynolds, the Central Evaporator Plant operated like a cheese factory in which maple sap, like milk, was transported from a variety of sap producers to a large processing facility where sap was combined and converted into maple syrup.  As with the cheese factory where milk producers were paid based on the butterfat content of their milk, sap producers were paid based on the sugar content of their sap.

The Reynolds family had always been maple producers, making syrup and sugar from maple trees in their own sugarbush.  But in 1946, Adin Reynolds decided to greatly expand his production and he had a novel idea how to do it.  He began in 1947 by building a new sugarhouse next to his house, not far from State Highway 45.  He then solicited farmers near his Antigo home to tap their maple woods for sap and deliver it to his sugarhouse, where they were paid based on the percentage of sugar per gallon of sap.

According to his son, Juan Reynolds, Adin had no problem convincing area farmers to sell their sap.  Located near the intersection of Langlade, Shawano and Marathon Counties, the countryside around the Aniwa plant is marked with dairy farms interspersed between stands of second growth sugar maples.  Moreover, the months of March and April were the slow and muddy seasons for most farm families.  Farmers had the two most important components for sap production – trees and available labor to tap and gather.

Reynolds’ Aniwa operation quickly grew, expanding from two to three evaporators in 1949 to four evaporators in 1962 making syrup from 75,000 taps.  Other maple producers followed Reynolds’ lead, and with his advice and equipment sales set up their own Central Evaporator Plants in the area.  Notable among these were plants run by George Klement in Polar and Sidney Maas in Tilleda.  Reynolds later purchased the Polar and Tilleda plants, along with another Central Evaporator Plant in Kingsley, Michigan.  At their peak in the mid-1960s, the Reynolds Sugarbush was making 30 to 40,000 gallons of syrup a year from at least 160,000 taps on 14 evaporators in these four Central Evaporator Plants.

Another Central Evaporator Plant went into operation in 1962 in Price County near the village of Ogema.  Ray Norlin and his brother-in-law Louis Motley expanded their small operation to 2800 taps and began to buy sap from 7,000 more taps making as much as 3000 gallons of syrup a year.  A portion of this syrup was sold in bottles and cans under the label Sunny Hills Maple Syrup; however, the bulk of it was sold wholesale in barrels to Reynolds Sugarbush.

 

Image of Ray Norlin’s Central Evaporator Plant near Ogema, Wisconsin in the mid – 1960s.

Although he was the most successful Central Evaporation Plant operator, Adin Reynolds was not necessarily the first maple producer to buy large volumes of sap in the late 1940s and early 1950s.  To the west in Central Minnesota, the Holbert Brothers also instigated a sap buying program in 2947 for their Mille Lacs Maple Products Company.  Although the sap buying and syrup making portion of his business was short lived, ending in 1950, Sherman Holbert’s operation was very large for the time, processing sap on two large evaporators from as many as 20,000 taps in the Mille Lacs Lake region.  Holbert also developed a Midwestern market by buying large volumes of bulk syrup to be sold to General Foods for the Log Cabin brand of blended syrup.  Holbert left the maple business entirely by 1953, opening the door for the Reynolds Sugarbush to assume the large General Foods bulk syrup contracts.

Over the course of the 1950s word of the Central Evaporator Plant and its successes in Wisconsin spread among maple producers in the northeast and New England states.  In the traditionally larger maple producing states like Vermont, New York, and Pennsylvania, sap buying was generally unheard of at the time, especially on the scale being carried out in Wisconsin.  But by the 1960s, , the Central Evaporator Plant, along with plastic tubing and the invention of the antibacterial paraformaldehyde tap hole pellet, was one of the hot topics of discussion among industry leaders.  In fact, C.O. Willits, the maple syrup industry’s leading researcher wrote that “the current trend toward central evaporator plants has marked a new era in the maple industry”.

The growth of the Reynolds Sugarbush empire and the purchase of additional Central Evaporator Plants in 1960, 1963, and 1965 was in large part a result of the contract Reynolds secured with General Foods Corporation in 1959 to supply thousands of gallons of syrup for the making of Log Cabin brand table syrup.  In order to meet General Foods demand, Reynolds Sugarbush produced tens of thousands of gallons of syrup and purchased many times more gallons of bulk syrup from Wisconsin producers and across the maple producing regions of the United States and Canada.

Through the 1950s and 1960s, the popularity of the Central Evaporator Plants, along with Reynolds Sugarbush’s promotional efforts and syrup buying program led to a significant increase in the production of maple syrup in Wisconsin.  Production grew so much that, by 1970, Wisconsin moved into position as the third greatest syrup producing state behind Vermont and New York.  It comes as no surprise that the idea for the Central Evaporator Plant was born in Wisconsin.  As the most prominent dairy state in the country, most of Wisconsin’s rural residents in the 1950s and 1960s were familiar with the organization of the dairy industry and cheese factories and took to the concept readily.  Likewise, many sap producers were dairy farmers and had both the equipment and technical knowledge needed for moving large volumes of perishable sap.

Reynolds later closed the Polar plant and sold the Kingsley, Michigan and Tilleda plants back their owners in the early 1970s.  Sidney Maas continued to operate the Tilleda sugarhouse as a Central Evaporator Plant through the 1980s on sap from 8200 of his own taps and sap purchased from 5000 additional taps.  In 1993 Maas sold the sugarhouse to Charlie Wagner who had developed a successful syrup operation near his home in Peshtigo and wanted to expand.  Aware of the sap buying history of the operation and the available sap resources in the area, Wagner revised the sap buying program, convincing many of the earlier sap producing families under the Reynolds era to again tap their trees and sell their sap.  Today, the Tilleda plant uses reverse osmosis and two large oil fired evaporators to make syrup from as many as 40,000 taps, over 90 percent of which is purchased sap.  The Tilleda plant is particularly notable in the history of Wisconsin maple production.  With nearly continuous syrup production since Sidney Maas built the sugar house in the 1940s, the Tilleda sugarhouse has the honor of being one of the oldest continually used sugar houses in Wisconsin, it is one of the largest U.S. sugarhouses by volume west of Maine.  In addition, it is probably the oldest Central Evaporator Plant still in operation in North America.

Only a handful of sugarhouses that follow the plan of a Central Evaporator Plant operating primarily or entirely on purchased sap, still exist in the U.S.  However it is not uncommon for commercial producers to augment their own sap supplies with some sap purchased from neighbors and reliable sap producers, ultimately the result of an idea that began over fifty years ago in Wisconsin.

Matthew M. Thomas. “The Central Evaporator Plant in Wisconsin Maple History.” Wisconsin Maple News, December 2005, volume 21, no. 2, page 10.