Greetings From Your President

Once again, our Fall Tour is past. This year we enjoyed some very nice weather to go with visiting five of our members operation's in the southwest comer of the state. A big MMSA thank you to Jack and Jill Brown, the Mesko and Hershberger families, Phil and Betty Meisner, Don and Toan Dodd and Tom Cook and Betsy Carls. A special thanks to Craig and Sandy Arnold for handling the registration, and to Don Dodd for organizing the tour. We enjoyed a good noontime meal at the Pokagon United Methodist Church. The lunch was put on by the Old Rugged Cross Association. The proceeds from our lunch went to the restoration fund for the church building where the hymn, "The Old Rugged Cross" was sung in it's entirety for the very first time. We were given a tour of the Church and the restoration plans were explained.

Fourteen of us attended the NAMSC and IMSI meeting in St. Cloud Minnesota in October. The conference was well attended by all states. We all attended the many meetings of both organizations, had a good day of tours, visited the vendor displays, attended several technical sessions and enjoyed plenty of good food. One evening which I especially enjoyed was a round table discussion of various sugar bush issues. The Haigh Family is very happy, as we took second place with our Maple Cream in the NAMSC Contest.

We are all talking about next year. The conference will be at The Red Jacket Inn in North Conroy, New Hampshire. The dates are October 20-23, 2002. We hope to plan a bus trip once more. Debbie Thomas will be working on the arrangements.

The 42nd Annual meeting of the Michigan Maple Syrup Association is all set for Saturday, January 19th, 2002 at the Doherty Hotel in Clare. The format for the meeting will be much the same as in the past with Randy Heiligmann from Ohio State University as our keynote speaker.

We will have breakout sessions on,

• tubing installation and maintenance
• tubing cleaning
• candy and cream
• production efficiencies
• blending and repacking
• beginner’s session

Some of the sessions this year will be panel and/or round table discussions. Some of you may be asked to participate on a panel, so please say yes and share your knowledge.

As you may remember, we were a little crowded last year. The Doherty is expanding. There will be some new guestrooms and additional small meeting rooms this year. By the 2003 meeting they will have their new conference center open and we should have a much larger room for the meeting as well as more space for our vendors.

Steve Youdes is in charge of the maple syrup, cream and candy contest. The rules were published in the newsletter two years ago. Copies will be available at the meeting. Don't forget to bring your best maple syrup, cream and candy to the meeting.

Sophy Carpenter will be our honored member this year. Sophy handled the registration for the NAMSC and IMSI meeting, which we hosted in 1996. She and her late husband, Leonard, were involved in the some of the very first meetings of the Michigan Maple Syrup Association.

Have a very Blessed Christmas and Happy New Year. We hope to see you all in Clare on January 19, 2002.

Larry Haigh
President, Michigan Maple Syrup Association