Bigleaf maple syrup is now included as an accepted product in Oregon’s Farm Direct bill. Neil of Neil’s Bigleaf Maple Syrup sells a beautiful product online, and many smaller producers are beginning to sell direct from their farms or at markets. Over the past decade, the bigleaf maple sugaring movement has grown, due to: new publicity use of efficient sugaring methods from the East research at Oregon State, Washington State, and University of Washington and the success of first commercial producers. Many hobby tappers have been active over the past 50 years in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and Northern California. Q: How common is sugaring here in the PNW? Can people find local syrup at, say, farmers markets or grocery stores?Ī: While we know that Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest have always valued the bigleaf maple for many uses, harvesting sap from the tree for syrup is a more recent activity. She made her first bigleaf syrup in 2018 after moving to the PNW and launched the Oregon Maple Project two years later, bringing sugaring opportunities and education to the Portland area. Eliza Nelson, the organization’s founder and director, developed a passion for sugaring while growing up in Vermont. The Oregon Maple Project is focused on specifically sugaring bigleaf maple trees. Turning sap into maple syrup is a process known as “sugaring,” and involves tapping a tree, collecting its sap, and boiling off the water until sweet, dark syrup remains. New England’s prized sugar maples contain higher sugar content (about 2%) than their PNW cousins, the bigleaf maples (about 1%), but all maples - and many other types of trees - store sugar in their sap to act as a sort of antifreeze, protecting cells and tissues from extreme cold. Hidden within the sap in such low quantities as to be all but impossible to detect by taste is sugar. Maple trees of the Pacific Northwest may be leafless in the winter, but beneath their mossy bark flows a substance that humans have harvested for generations: sap.