While maple syrup season has arrived early in some parts of the state, county producers say they’re still a few weeks away from boiling the sap.
“Last year we started March 5, but usually we’re mid- to late-March,” said CJ King, owner of The Maple Moose in Easton. “It varies because of the weather; a couple years ago we started Feb. 26, but that’s pretty unusual.”
King said the maple trees are beginning to thaw.
“We started drilling some Feb. 21; some were thawed, some weren’t. They’ve got to be thawed before they’ll run. The trees don’t lie; if it’s not spring, they’re not ready,” he said. “It depends on the snow cover. Anything above freezing — from now on — we’ll have sap running.
“Once the stems get thawed out usually they’ll stay. At night when the tree cools down and freeze, it actually acts like a vacuum and sucks the water right out of the ground. It pulls it up the stem of the tree, and the next day when the sun warms the treetop up, it starts pushing that liquid right back down the tree and that’s when we get it,” said King.
While recent temperatures are making it feel like spring, King said wildlife in the woods aren’t quite so sure.
“There are no birds,” he said, “so I think it’s a bit early. But you have to be ready. We have a short season up here. Some places will have a month-and-a-half, but we’re lucky if we get three or four weeks out of it. We’ll probably be a couple weeks early starting this year.”
Ironically the owner of The Maple Moose has been relying on moose to help determine the start of the season.
“I saw where the moose have been traveling,” King said. “About a week ago they started eating the buds, and I watch for that because as soon as they start eating the buds off the little saplings, you know the sugar’s there. Moose change their eating habits. They were eating fir and spruce buds all winter and now they’re changing over and they’re starting to eat all of the bush ends and sap ends of the maples, which tells me that the start of maple season is coming. We watch the animals a lot. I’d say we’ll start the first part of March.”
Maple Moose crews will tap 800 trees this year.
“We try to average 10 gallons of sap per tap. If we can get 10 gallons of sap out of a tree then we can make a quart of syrup. Last year we didn’t get 10 gallons out of a tree; we only averaged about seven,” said King, noting that it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. “I’m hoping we’ll end up with 200 gallons of syrup. We could get more, we could get less … that’s Mother Nature’s department.”
Located at 28 Bowers Road in Easton, the sugarhouse will be open March 17-18, Maple Sunday Weekend (March 24-25), March 31-April 1 and April 7-8. For more information, log onto www.themaplemoose.com or call 488-6824.
Charlene Bradbury, who co-owns Bradbury Maple Farms in Bridgewater with her husband, Boyd, said she doesn’t expect to begin production before mid-March.
“We’re right about on schedule for tapping; we’re going to start tapping trees hopefully within the next few days,” she said last Wednesday, “but normally our maple syrup making season (boiling of sap) in northern Maine doesn’t start until around March 20.
“Two years ago we had very little snow and a very early season, and while they were tapping the first week in March, the sap was running so much that they had to stop tapping and start boiling,” she said. “That was very unusual. This year’s winter has been very mild and there’s been very little snow, but you really need to have several days in a row of mild temperatures (preferable in the 40s during the daytime and down in the 20s at night) — more than just one or two — in order for it to really get flowing enough to make it worthwhile to get started what with the evaporator and all the apparatus that’s involved.”
Bradbury said the last two years have yielded high quantities of maple syrup.
“The past two years have been our highest in production, but it’s just like growing potatoes … we have no control really. The weather controls it all,” she said. “We’re optimistic — and certainly hopeful — that it will be a good year, but we’re just going to take whatever we get one day at a time and hopefully in the end we’ll have about the same as we did last year which was in excess of 700 gallons.”
The Bradburys have owned the business for 28 years, but the property actually dates back more than 75 years in the family history. They have more than 3,000 taps on their trees across 80 acres. Sap flows through an intricate network of tubing into a building where, after several processes to remove water, it becomes syrup.
As the Bradburys keep an eye on the weather, Charlene is currently booking educational tours.
“Some teachers are already scheduling visits,” she said, “and we will be having our open house events the last two weekends in March and the first two weekends in April. We’ll also be participating in Maine Maple Sunday (March 25).
“This is always a good time for us and our family,” she said, “and we encourage people to stop by and learn more about the process.”
Bradbury Maple Farms is located at 202 BootFoot Road. For more information, log onto www.bradburymaple.com, e-mail info@bradburymaple.com or call 429-8306.
University of Maine Cooperative Extension educator and maple syrup expert Kathy Hopkins in the Somerset County office in Skowhegan said most sap harvesters began tapping two weeks ago, and some are already boiling sap into syrup. She predicts a healthy maple syrup season, barring sudden and extreme warm weather, which could force an early end to the season without the usual snow cover that helps keep the environment cool and constant in the woods.
“It’s a little early,” she said, “but if it stays with temperatures like this, we’ll be good.”
Last year Maine produced 360,000 gallons of maple syrup.
