Matter Family Farm
Now that we’ve seen the artisanal version of maple sugaring, Bill takes us to Matter (pronounced “modder”) Farm to see a bigger operation.
“Two years older than ours,” he comments as we drive past the entrance posts, marked with the 1856 homestead date. Like Bill and Mary Ann’s place, Matter Farm predates the establishment of the town of Delano. Both farms take advantage of “The Big Woods,” the virgin forest of elm and sugar maples that have grown here since time immemorial, and remain preserved on their private lands — holdouts in a sea of new housing developments.
The Matter family is a combination cow and maple farm. Family farms, once an American staple, are hard to maintain in the face of modern commercial agriculture — part of the reason why so many nearby farms have sold to housing developers in recent years. Matter’s Farm to Table makes up the difference by making premium products like bourbon barrel-aged maple syrup and cinnamon maple sugar, and by selling dairy, syrup, and beef directly to the consumer, mostly online.
The farm gives free tours to people who want to see the operation, but Bill is a family friend, so he brings us by just to step inside the milking barn (I am much impressed by the automated manure trough, which is an ellipsoid conveyor that scoops the patties along to the outside) and the maple sugaring operation.
Paul, the homestead’s sixth-generation farmer, gives us permission to check out their “sugar shack,” but warns us it’s not in operation.
“It’s too cold,” he shakes his head. “I could come out here with a tea kettle to keep unfreezing all the hoses, but I’m just going to wait until it gets warmer.”
Their sugaring operation is commercial, but still artisanal; there are much bigger syruping operations. Matter Farm ultimately boils syrup on a big wood stove, like we’ve been doing. But the scale is grander, and the tools more efficient. There are hundreds of gallons of sap in the holding tanks outside, and some large percentage of the water is removed from the sap before it goes stovetop through reverse osmosis filtration. This denser maple sap then goes into a setup on top of the fire designed for more continuous operation.
Our own sugaring operation has hit a slowdown from the cold, too. Though there aren’t nearly so many hoses involved (our version involves a lot more pouring and hauling), the trees themselves can’t move liquids in a cold snap. Spring is delayed: the unusually cold weather is keeping the flow of carbohydrate sugar frozen in the xylem instead of rising to make leaves-and the taps depend on that traffic.
The weather is cold, but the neighbors are warmhearted. Bill gets a text from Paul that we’re welcome to swing by Matter Farm and take as much sap as we’d like from the holding tanks, since it’s such a challenging season.
We take them up on the offer, excited to test our new skills on a second run.
We pull up around the same time as a tour group arrives. Bill already has a maple sap pump setup that he uses to move sap from the refrigerators in the woods to his vehicle to the sugar shack (more than a couple of gallons is a lot to carry through the snow, and the sugaring season means moving hundreds of gallons). He’s filled the back of his truck with four big, clean trash barrels to hold our take. We feed one end of the pump hose down into the giant holding tank, and hold the other in the barrel, but pause pumping to listen as the tour group comes through.
Ben, who is around same age as the homeschool group visiting today, is the seventh generation to farm on this homestead. He’s nervous, stands up in front of the group anyway to read out cow facts his mom has written about the Holsteins raised for dairy and the Angus mix for beef. Confidence bolstered, he leads them all into the dairy barn to show the milking equipment.
Eileen and I have been peeking in the window at the new calves, gentle and sweet-looking with their wet pink noses and spindly legs. The children squeal as they go inside to meet them.
Outside, our four tanks are full, so we head back to the homestead to start the boiling process.
Previous: Boiling and Bottling | Next: Real Minnesota Weather
If you want a taste, Matter Farm has an online shop with all their maple goods.
