Weather may be good news for maple syrup season in New England, until the sap goes 'buddy'

While much of the Northeast may still not have recovered from the deluge of snow it received this winter, spring is just around the corner and with it comes maple syrup season. A recent run of warm days has tempted many syrup producers in Maine to begin tapping trees, but "other producers, particularly those in northern Maine, are cautiously watching an approaching cold stretch and will wait until after it passes to collect the sap," Sharon Kiley Mack of the Bangor Daily News reports. Last year was not kind to maple syrup producers, and early reports say this year may bring more of the same. (BDN photo by John Clark Russ: Lee Kinney drills a tree)

"Last year, maple producers suffered through a mixed season — early in the southern part of the state and later up north," Mack writes. Producers usually begin tapping trees around March 20, but weather cause that date to move almost a month early last season. Eric Ellis of Maine Maple Products in Madison, Maine, said the weather this year likely signals a similar early season. "We need temperatures of 20 or so in the night, followed by 40 to 45 in the day, without a strong wind, for a good sap flow," Kathy Hopkins, maple syrup specialist with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, told Mack, noting "when daytime temperatures are consistently in the 60s, the buds begin to form and the sap tastes 'buddy.'" (Read more)

For the first time in two decades Richard Focht, an upstate New York maple syrup producer, had to buy snowshoes so he could walk through the forest and set up his taps, Sarah Bradshaw of the Poughkeepsie Journal reports. Last year was one of the worst seasons in recent history for upstate New York producers because spring came too fast, Focht said. "It was cold and it got warm all of the sudden," Focht, said. "It was real bad last year. The entire season was one week." (Read more)

In Rhode Island producers are hopeful the cold winter will mean big returns for them this year, Thomas J. Morgan of The Providence Journal reports. "The weather has had a very positive effect," said Peter Susi, marketing supervisor of the state Department of Environmental Management’s Division of Agriculture. "The maple flow likes cold nights and sunny days." Gibby Fountain, who owns Spring Hill Sugarhouse in Richmond, notes the snow cover for much of the winter prevented a frost that would have frozen the tree roots. "Any day we get temperatures above freezing, the sap runs vigorously," she said. (Read more)