WILLOW CREEK — The smell of woodsmoke and sweet steam has found a new home on a hillside three miles east of town.
Cormac O’Flaherty, a 34-year-old former mill worker, has tapped 60 sugar maples on his property on Sugarhouse Road and produced his first batch of maple syrup in a makeshift sugarhouse built from scrap lumber and corrugated roofing.
“It’s not much to look at,” O’Flaherty admitted, gesturing at the steam-shrouded structure, “but it works.”
O’Flaherty learned sugaring from his grandfather in Vermont before moving to Willow Creek to work at the mill in 1947. He was laid off in the 1956 mill contraction and spent two years doing odd jobs before deciding to put his grandfather’s knowledge to use.
“The maples on this hillside are some of the best I’ve seen,” he said. “Good south-facing slope, well-drained soil. They’ve been here a hundred years, and nobody ever tapped them.”
The operation is modest by any measure. O’Flaherty collects sap by hand from 60 buckets, boils it over a wood-fired evaporator, and bottles the finished syrup in glass quart jars. His first season yielded approximately 30 gallons of syrup — far less than a commercial operation would produce, but enough to supply the General Store and a few local customers.
The Gazette sampled O’Flaherty’s syrup and can report that it is “clear, amber, and possessed of a delicate maple flavor with hints of vanilla and woodsmoke — the equal of any syrup produced in the more famous sugar regions of Vermont.”
Seamus O’Donnell has agreed to stock the syrup at the General Store, where it will be sold for $1.50 per quart. “Good maple syrup is hard to find in Aroostook County,” O’Donnell said. “We used to get it from Vermont, which always seemed wrong.”
O’Flaherty plans to expand to 100 taps next season. “There’s no hurry,” he said. “The trees aren’t going anywhere. And neither am I.”