This Swiss-German family has been making the golden syrup in West Virginia for three generations.
Photo Above: The sugar camp houses the processes that advance sap water to maple syrup.
Photo Courtesy of Courtesy Spruce Knob.
In a West Virginia hamlet called Harman, there is a volunteer fire department. There are a couple of convenience stores. And according to the most recent census, there are fewer than 100 people.
It’s a calm, quiet spot in the state’s Potomac Highlands region. But 14 miles away, despite frequent blankets of snow, things are astir. Right now, the sap is about to flow. For the Swartzentruber family, that means moving into high gear. Winter isn’t a time for rest.
Randolph County is home to about 27,300 people. Its maple tree population is much higher. Residents have been collecting sugar water from those trees and cooking it down into maple syrup since at least the time of the Civil War.
The Swartzentrubers, one of many Swiss-German families in the region, have been making syrup for three generations. Today, they operate Spruce Knob Maple, by most accounts the largest maple syrup producer in a state whose reputation for the product is rising like that sap.
The maple syrup world has its own language. Ron Swartzentruber calls his line of work “sugaring,” which is done in a “sugarhouse,” on the premises of a “sugar camp.”
The Swartzentruber family’s camp sits at an elevation of about 3,200 feet. Climbing the surrounding slopes, and reaching as high as 4,000 feet, Ron and his brothers tap about 17,000 maple trees annually. None of those trees were planted by human hands. They all grew there naturally. Most are sugar maples. Some are the red variety.
What Ron calls a “good sap year” yields about 4,500 gallons of maple syrup.
The tapping of the trees usually begins in the middle of January. “When the trees are starting to push water, that’s what you’re looking for to start,” Ron says. “Once you start getting freeze and thaw, that’ll start pushing your sap water out.”
By the middle of February, the sap starts running.
Depending on the season and weather conditions, it could take up to 60 gallons of sugar water to make one gallon of maple syrup.
When Ron first participated in the making of maple syrup as a young boy, his grandfather, Claude Swartzentruber, cooked down the syrup in an evaporator over a wood fire. At the camp today, the heat source is gas. Before that stage, though, the liquid must go through a reverse osmosis machine to begin concentrating sugar levels. It’s a much more complex and sensitive process than either of us had imagined.
Then there is the whole issue of color. Some customers prefer a lighter syrup, while other customers seek out a darker product.
“For the darker syrup, the sugar is getting browner. It’s cooking longer,” says Ron. “We think the maple flavor carries through better in the darker, medium amber syrups. Light syrup is great to put in the window, but for pancakes, we like a good amber.”
And about breakfast. The Swartzentruber family appreciates a good syrupy pancake, but they say consumers shouldn’t restrict maple syrup consumption to mornings.
“Maple syrup is good as a natural sweetener for meats,” Ron tells us. “It’s good in baking, in hot drinks, over ice cream, and with yogurt or oatmeal.”
Those uses are multiplied by Spruce Knob’s ingenious line of infused maple syrups, which, Ron adds, take your mind away from just using maple syrup at breakfast.
The infused syrups currently in the product line are blueberry, bourbon barrel-aged, cinnamon, coffee amaretto, ginger, hot chili pepper, lavender and sea salt.
Ron’s personal favorite is the cinnamon-infused maple syrup because of its versatility—in tea, oatmeal, yogurt, on ice cream and in coffee. He describes it as “French toast in a bottle,” adding that barbecue pitmasters buy it and use it in their sauces.
We used it to create a quick, alcohol-free version of Bananas Foster by lightly sautéing two sliced bananas in a tablespoon of butter and then finishing them with a drizzle of Spruce Knob’s cinnamon-infused maple syrup.
According to the company’s website, maple syrup qualifies as a “superfood,” rich in calcium, potassium, iron and Vitamin B.
Ron credits his father Abner and grandfather Claude for teaching him volumes about maple syrup making and sustainable forestry, along with Dr. Mike Rechlin, who served as research professor in the Appalachian Program at Future Generations University, a global learning organization. The Swartzentruber family passes that knowledge along during Mountain State Maple Days, the third Saturdays in February and March of each year, when the public can visit sugar camps across the state. West Virginia is home to about 50 maple syrup producers.
The Swartzentrubers especially enjoy proving that New England is not the only region in America where exceptional maple syrup is produced.
And this enterprising family doesn’t just make maple syrup. The seven brothers and two sisters are involved in dairy farming, landscaping, excavation work, rustic furniture refinishing and produce farming. One is a paramedic. Whether it’s cooking down sugar water or fixing a fence, hard work brings them joy.
Learning about the labor, knowledge and respect for the land that define Spruce Knob Maple makes the syrup even sweeter.
The products described in this story can be found at spruceknobmaple.com.
Fred and Jill Sauceman study and celebrate the foodways of Appalachia and the South from their home base in Johnson City, Tennessee.
The story above first appeared in our January / February 2025 issue.
