SEARCY COUNTY, Ark. — As snow melts on a February day in Searcy County, the sunshine warms the land and the mercury climbs to near 40 degrees.
“Today is a good day and we've got perfect weather conditions,” said Darryl Treat, a farm-owner.
With buckets in hand, he's searching for a sweet solution; slowly adding up drip by drip.
“There's so many people in Arkansas that really don’t have a clue that you can make maple syrup here in the Ozarks, but you can,” Treat said.
First, you need a maple tree that has been around for awhile.
“We have native sugar maples and silver maples up here in the hills and they can be tapped,” Treat explained.
Then, you need to find the perfect spot and place a tap into the tree.
"It's like drilling into a juicy apple," he said.
After that, you hook the tap to the bucket so you can collect the "liquid gold."
Treat said it takes a day or two for an entire 5-gallon bucket to fill up, but it takes eight more of those 5-gallon buckets to boil down to just one gallon of syrup.
The next step is to boil the sap down, but always make sure you do so outside.
“If you boil it inside, all the steam that's coming up from the pot actually is sticky, and so it will coat your house with sticky steam and that's not good. Your wife's not going to like that, as I found out,” Treat explained.
Several days are needed, but Treat said he lets it boil while he reads the newspaper in the morning or cooks breakfast.
After boiling, the bugs and bark need to be filtered out.
“We just simply collect the sap and we pour it into a bucket with a pillowcase,” he said.
The foam forming on the surface is also unwanted, so you'll need to skim it off and throw it away.
The final step can be done inside and involves some science.
"We have to take some of that out of this pot, fill it up into this reservoir here, and then we're going to use a hydrometer, which is going to measure the density of maple syrup, relative to water, and that will help us tell when the syrup is ready," he explained.
So, how does Arkansas syrup stack up to New England’s?
THV11's Nathan Scott got a taste and described it as "very sweet, very rich, and definitely homemade."
Darryl Treat said he has been doing this as a hobby for five years and that it's been working out pretty well for him, as he gets really good quality syrup.
With all the time and labor, syrup makers are rare. Weather also plays a major role.
“In mid to late January, I start looking at the weather forecast to see where I will have these optimum days of temperatures at night in the 20s, spiking up in the days in the 40s, and sunny days,” Treat said.
However, once the buds show, the season is over and the sap turns sour. This season will run from late Jan to late Feb around the first of March.