Timothy Perkins stands by four evaporators at the Proctor Maple Research Center, which is part of the University of Vermont. Photos by Bethany M. Dunbar
UNDERHILL — Timothy Perkins started out studying spruce trees.
He graduated from Lake Region Union High School in 1979. He went to the University of Vermont, where he studied acid rain with Hub Vogelmann. Studies of vegetation on Camel’s Hump have been ongoing since the 1960s.
Mr. Perkins has shifted his attention to maple trees. He joked that he couldn’t get UVM to change the name of the Proctor Maple Research Center when he started working there, so he figured he’d better do some work that lived up to its name.
He certainly has done so.
In August U.S. Senator Pat Leahy announced that Progressive Plastics in Williamstown will start full-scale production of a maple sap spout designed by Mr. Perkins, who has been the director of the research center since 1996.
Senator Leahy also announced a new UVM appropriation for maple research at the Proctor center — $188,000 to fund research to further increase sap yields.
Mr. Perkins’ spout has a simple check valve inside it that keeps sap from flowing back into the trees — a little ball that rolls into place and blocks the valve when the sap starts flowing the wrong way. It’s designed for use in vacuum systems.
“A lot of research has already been done on gravity,” he said. There are a lot of small producers of maple syrup still using buckets, but 95 percent of the syrup in the world is made with vacuum systems.
“The maple industry is growing, growing very strongly for years,” he said. He said there are a number of producers in Vermont with more than 50,000 taps, in some cases up to 100,000.
He said that his research has successfully increased production from half a gallon per tap to a gallon of syrup per tap.
“We did it last year,” he said.
People like to spend time in the sugarhouse, he said, “But the place where you make your money is in the woods.”
His focus has been, and continues to be, what can be done to increase yields in a sustainable way.
Mr. Perkins said the spout will increase production for maple sugarmakers by 25 percent to 90 percent. If a sugarmaker’s tubing is brand new, the
Timothy Perkins holds a maple spout he has designed which will increase production for sugarmakers up to 90 percent. This clear version shows the little black ball that acts as a check valve inside. The spouts available commercially are black.
gains will be lower because there are no bacteria inside new tubing.
Even though tubing is completely cleaned out every year, some bacteria remain. Then when there is a release of suction in the vacuum system, the tree, which has a slight amount of suction inside it, will suck sap back in. Sap also gets sucked back in from the pipeline when the tree refreezes each night.
“Up to a pint can run back into the tree at night,” he said.
When bacteria gets into the tap hole, the hole’s reaction is to heal up to keep more bacteria from getting in.
Sugarmakers have known this for decades, and other attempts have been made to stop the tap holes from healing over too early. For years sugarmakers used a tablet made of paraformaldehyde. The tablet had problems, though, including that the taphole would develop a large wound.
It was also a substance that was not great to have in the maple sap. Mr. Perkins said it mostly evaporated and wasn’t in the syrup, but it was probably not good for sugarmakers to breathe in during the boiling process.
“It was actually Vermont, the Vermont industry, that first sought to ban paraformaldehyde,” said Mr. Perkins. He said it has been banned since the 1980s.
Mr. Perkins came up with the idea for the check valve in October 2007 and ordered a bunch of different types for testing.
The current design has been in use for two years.
“We’ve patented the idea because we knew it was going to be something that was going to be commercially viable,” he said. UVM is working with Leader Evaporator. In the spring of 2009, the company gave out 15,000 of the new spouts for their sugarmakers to try. Mr. Perkins gets a little income from each spout sold as part of the deal with UVM.
Part of the reason the new spout increases production is that it tends to extend the sugaring season. The tree is not trying to heal its tap hole as quickly, so sap flows out of it for more days. The spouts can delay the end of the season for a week to three weeks.
“The average season is four weeks,” he said. “Over 40 years the season has shrunk by three days.”
He said the season averaged 33 days 40 years ago. It’s also moving earlier into the spring, due to global warming.
Mr. Perkins said it’s extremely difficult to predict the effects of global warming, but it will certainly have an impact.
One of the negative consequences might be a higher prevalence of ice storms. Other possibilities include diseases and insects moving into Vermont that were not able to live here in past years due to the colder climate.
Among the issues of global warming are changing rainfall patterns. Mr. Perkins said those are even harder to predict than temperature changes, but so far it does not look like Vermont will suffer intense droughts.
Mr. Perkins grew up in Barton, and recalls helping his grandfather, Clifton Perkins, and his uncle sugaring in Westmore. He has five brothers and two sisters.
“Sugaring is a lot of work,” he said, adding that haying is too. He did the hard work but was always more interested in science. His parents encouraged him with chemistry sets and in whatever other ways they could imagine.
He also credited David Paul, his science teacher at Barton Academy and Graded School, and Greg Tocci at Lake Region, for encouraging his interest in science.
Some of the future studies at Proctor are focusing on sap tubing. Tubing used today is quite different from original types, he said, and the patterns of tubing in the sugarwoods make a huge difference.
Tubing used to be soft and pliable, and these days most of it is made of harder plastic — except the short lines that connect the tap hole in the tree to a bigger line, which need to be flexible.
One question sugarmakers have wondered about is how many taps should ideally be on a lateral line? The answer to that question is “strive for five” according to Mr. Perkins. It’s most efficient for sap flow if there is only one tap per lateral line, but that’s too expensive to set up.
Vermont sugarmakers have been extremely helpful to the UVM studies, Mr. Perkins mentioned. They have really good questions and often have great suggestions for solutions or new studies to be done. In many cases, it’s too expensive for a maple producer to try out an idea in his or her own sugarbush — especially if the outcome might be that he or she doesn’t make enough to cover the extra cost.
For example, Mr. Perkins might set up a study of 600 trees and that study might cost $150,000.
Even though the cost is high, the production increases at Proctor have been so dramatic that it has been worth the expense.
One of the studies the team at Proctor has been looking at is whether or not the color of the syrup is directly related to the flavor. The reason some syrup is darker is that it has a higher percentage of invert sugar from microorganisms, Mr. Perkins said.
Air injection can create very light colored syrup, but it does not have invert sugar.
“You can’t make candy out of it,” he said. “It’s a different composition of sugar.”
The air-injected syrup tends not to solidify, which is needed in candy making.
The Proctor Center Maple Processing Research Facility is a separate building on the site with four brand new shiny evaporators. The roof has solar panels which creates enough electricity, on an annual basis, to run the building.
Mr. Perkins said they considered wind towers but thought they might be controversial at their site in Underhill, on the shoulder of Mount Mansfield.
The center does have a high tower, just above the tree line. It is called a canopy research tower and measures wind speed, temperature, humidity, and gives data related to photosynthesis and air pollution at several points from the ground to above the tree canopy.
Another study at Proctor is about changing the plumbing of an evaporator so that the heat from the steam that normally floats away into the air is redirected into preheating the sap. Fuel efficiency can be increased by 7 to 12 percent with this one improvement, Mr. Perkins said.
On Wednesday, October 21, The Northeastern Vermont Development Association is hosting a meeting for sugarmakers to hear more about the new spout. The meeting will be from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Barton Memorial Building. Mr. Perkins and Bradley Gillilan of Leader Evaporator Co. will speak. The meeting is free, and refreshments will be served.
