By TOM KANE

SULLIVAN COUNTY - If you go to the Liberty Farmers' Market or the Bethel Farmers' Market during the summer, you will inevitably see Ray and Dottie Muthig selling their maple syrup.

That's their main method for marketing. "It works very well for us," Ray said.

Since 1958, they have been producing maple syrup up on their farm on Aiden Hill near the Neversink Reservoir. "My father ran a dairy farm here and I used to work with him when I got out of the service," Ray said. "When he retired in 1958 we bought it."

His father then built a tap house and began to produce maple syrup. "We started small," he said.

It takes about 40 to 50 gallons of maple sap to make one gallon of maple syrup. "This year it took 48 gallons to make one," Ray said.

"Last year was a poor year with the drought, so the sugar content was lower this year," Dottie said.

Both of them work on the maple syrup production. "If we can make 125 gallons, we' re satisfied," Ray said. "We've made as high as 160 gallons."

"The ratio is 40 to one. To make 121 gallons of maple syrup, it takes 4,840 gallons of sap," Ray said. The Muthigs have help from friends who are retirees and like to work in the woods.

The raw sap is collected in a tap or smoke house where most of the water is cooked off and the remainder is the pure gold of the syrup.

The Muthigs utilize mostly taps and buckets. "Some big operations use plastic tubing from the trees to a collection vat, or go right to the tap house."

"The sap begins to flow around the first week-end in March," Ray said. It takes a combination of freezing nights and warm days to get the early sugar sap flowing.

"When the buds start coming, the sugar is over," Dottie said. "And the budding time starts even though you don't see the buds."

Only hardwood maples produce the best sap. Other types of maple like silver maple and Norway maple have less sugar in the sap, Ray said.

"Soft maples make a darker syrup," Dottie said. "Most people prefer the light maple." The Muthigs also make maple cream, a more concentrated syrup that is harder.

Another maple producer is August and Irene Andersen of Long Eddy, who also sell their product at the farmers markets.

"We put in from 7,000 to 9,000 taps in the trees," Irene said of the farm, which uses tubing running from the trees to the tap house. "It's reverse osmosis," she said.

Another maple producing couple is Frank and Eleanor Wilcox of Fremont.

"Ninety nine percent of the trees have tubing," Eleanor said. "It's still a lot of work. You have to put it up and you have to take it down."

The Wilcoxes also run a dairy farm high on a hill near Roscoe on County Road 93 with 43 milking cows.

"We're close to God up here," she said.