03/27/2006

Record-Eagle/Douglas Tesner
Chris Luchenbill lifts the side of an evaporator as steam fills the room at Maple Acres near Kewadin. The maple sap is preheated by baffles in the top of the evaporator before being boiled into syrup. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup.

Family tradition

By
Record-Eagle photographer

Making northern Michigan maple syrup has been a Luchenbill family tradition for more than 100 years.

The tradition started in the days when a pound of sugar was worth a full cord of maple wood, split and delivered to the Northport dock for shipment to Chicago. The family preferred to tap their own sap, boil it down and make maple sugar cakes in the spring to use all year as their main sweetener.

Today the family is located across Grand Traverse Bay near Kewadin about 50 miles from where it all began.

"Our first year here was in 1965 and we only had 75 taps," Lee Luchenbill said. "Today, we have more the 3,500 taps and hope to produce about 800 gallons of our pure maple syrup. Of course, that all depends on the weather."

Temperature is a key factor in sap production and making quality maple syrup, said Chris Luchenbill, her son.

"We need cold freezing night and warm days for the sap to run good, he said."

And the harvest time is short, his mother added.

"We have had seasons as short as six days and as long as six weeks," she said. "When the trees start to bud, we have to stop gathering sap.

When she and Chris get really busy, she calls in all her kids and grandchildren to help.

"At times we have had up to 20 people helping, including friends and neighbors," she said.