Northport couple sells syrup to honor late grandson
By Ross Boissoneau
Sun contributor
For Jim and Jan Brown, ’tis the season. No, not that one, and really not even really a holiday at all. But there is a season for making maple syrup. If there was a holiday attached to it, it’s a safe bet the Northport couple would be nearly as well-known as Santa and Rudolph.
Each year around this time, they take to the woods, tapping the maple trees on a portion of their 42 acres south of Northport. They drill the spials into the trees, put out the buckets and gather the sap, then turn it into the liquid gold beloved by so many.
“I’ve been doing it since 2009,” says Jim, a.k.a. Pa Brown. That’s what his grandson Rance called him. After Rance passed away from brain cancer in 2010, Jim and Jan decided to sell their syrup under the brand name Pa Brown’s Maple Syrup, and send the proceeds from sales to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. Though Rance lost his battle with brain cancer, Jim and Jan were touched by the care and thoughtfulness of the staff at St. Jude’s. “So, I chose to give all the proceeds (there).”
As anyone who has ever gathered and processed sap into syrup knows, it’s not easy. It’s taxing physical work, plus there’s all the equipment and learning exactly how to process the sap into syrup. For the Browns, the latter was no problem. “Jim’s a chemical engineer,” says Jan, and indeed he was able to quickly figure out how to take the watery sap and distill it.
It was actually Jan’s idea. The Michigan natives had moved back to their home state after 30 years in Texas, where Jim worked for Firestone. A neighbor invited Jim to watch a friend gather sap and boil it into syrup. “My wife said, ‘You ought to do that.’ I said, ‘Why would I want to do that?’”
His initial protestations notwithstanding, Jim was soon walking through the woods tapping trees. “The first year we did spials and buckets on 180 trees. The next year we did another 100. In our best year we were over 300,” he says.
Though they do get help from friends and family, the Browns do the bulk of the gathering and processing themselves. As they’ve grown older — Jim proudly notes he’s now 87½ — they have slowed down but are still going strong. “The last couple years I’ve put the first 100 out myself, then got help to do the others.” With this year’s abundant snowfall, they also had to hand-shovel their driveway and the path to the sugar shack when their snowblower broke down.
Their farm is located on East Camp Haven Road off M-22, just south of Northport proper. They post signs advertising the syrup at the entrance to their driveway.
Jim says the first run of the year is typically lighter in color. Later in the year it gets darker. Because so many people were raised on dark brown syrup – whether it was true maple or the maple-flavored syrup readily available at grocery stores – he says the demand for darker syrup outstrips the light. “Each batch is different. Personally, I can’t taste the difference,” he says.
So, it’s nice that they support the famed children’s hospital, but it’s probably just a drop in the maple sap bucket, right? Hardly. Jim estimates that over the 15 years they’ve been processing maple syrup – every year since 2009 except one during the pandemic – they’ve earned enough to donate nearly $70,000 to St. Jude’s.
That comes mostly from sales right at their farm. The syrup was available at the Tribune in Northport when that restaurant was in existence. Now their son in Birmingham sells it online, but as he developed an allergy to the sap he no longer comes up to help harvest it. Which is too bad, as they say he set the record for the most sap gathered the last year he helped.
The sap doesn’t start to run until daytime temperatures are above freezing while nights are still cold. Once the trees start budding, the sap run is over. “Last year everybody tapped about the second week of February,” says Jim. “I was holding back and finally did it the last week of February. I’d told my daughter (it would start) mid-March, and by mid-March it was shut down.”
This year’s longer and harder winter meant he didn’t start until the beginning of March. By the time you read this, Pa Brown’s Maple Syrup will be in full flavor, unless the season is already done. Jim and Jan say that’s the thing: You never really know when the season will start or when it will end. What you do know is that they will be out gathering sap, hauling it and processing it. Whatever the color, it will turn out to be a sweet deal for St. Jude’s.
The Glen Arbor Sun, which celebrates 30 years in 2025, is a free community publication supported by local advertisers and subscribers. Thanks for your readership and support.
