The recent mild snap allowed some maple producers to get an early start producing syrup last week. But a Lake Placid maple expert says smaller producers might want to wait for a longer thaw before firing up their sugarhouses.
Adam Wild, director of the Uihlein Maple Research Forest, near Lake Placid, said he and his crew have spent most of the winter installing and inspecting miles of vacuum tubing in preparation for the upcoming maple season. The Uihlein Forest taps about six-thousand sugar maples. He says last week’s thaw was a pleasant surprise.
"We were able to collect sap from the trees we do have tapped. Unfortunately we didn’t have all the trees tapped in time. But we were able to do our first boil of the season last Friday, and I know a lot of other larger maple syrup producers in the North County were also boiling sap last week. I’m a little concerned about some of the folks who are in the warmer regions, in central New York, where it hit the 70’s – those are the high temperatures we don’t like to see during maple season. But they down in the central, southern and western parts of New York got some great sap runs last week and made a lot of syrup," Wild said.
Wild adds last year was an excellent season for many maple syrup producers around the North Country, northern Vermont and Canada. He said at Uihlein Maple Research Forest they added more taps and produced over 3,000 gallons of syrup, making 2022 their best year ever. He’s hoping for ideal weather conditions this spring – a slow thaw, and temperatures in the low 40’s during the day and upper 20’s at night.
He explains "‘Cause the freezing temperature actually creates a negative pressure in the tree that allows the tree to pull in more ground water and that’s what recharges the tree. And the ground water traveling up the tree picks up all the stored sugars, and then when it gets above freezing during the day, that creates a positive pressure that pushes the water back down the tree, and then when we have a tap hole, that sap flows out the hole, because the atmospheric pressure is less than the pressure in the tree."
Adam Wild says last week’s warm weather had some smaller producers wondering if they should start hanging out sap buckets. His advice to the backyard bucket producer is to wait until the forecast looks better for longer sap runs.
He hopes for "Two or three days where it’s gonna be above 35. So, I would go out either that morning or the day before and tap those trees. And when you’re tapping a tree, make sure you’re far away from an old tap hole, you don’t want to be above or below. You need to drill a new hole each year, and you need to shift over from an old tap hole and make sure you not into any scars or damage that might be on a tree."
Wild says in 2022 Uihlein Maple Research Forest added more taps and produced over 3,000 gallons of syrup, the facility's best year ever.
This story came from North Country Public Radio.