Late-February snowfalls and cold days are keeping area maple syrup producers indoors when they should be tapping and boiling.
Although the start of the season is late in coming, area producers aren’t worried. Indeed, if Mother Nature gives
them the kind of weather they need to get the sap flowing, it could be a good year.
“It is late,” said Karl Evans, who hopes to tap 2,500 trees on his land in Ashtabula and Trumbull counties. “But it has also been a pattern. This will be the third year we made no syrup in February.”
“Were not in a panic mode,” Evans added. He said the forecast looks good for this weekend, and he’s planning to do his first boiling today or Friday.
Ron Franklin, who taps about 3,000 trees in his Jefferson Road, Plymouth Township, sugarbush, says the snow and wet ground bode well for copious sap flow, once it warms up.
“Last year, it was extremely dry,” says Franklin. “If (the trees) don’t have water, they can’t give as much sap.”
Franklin said he has tapped about 90 percent of his trees and attached the plastic tubing to those taps. This is one of the few years he has had to wear snowshoes while tapping the trees. Usually, boots are required to slosh through the mud.
On warm afternoons, he saw a few hours of production from the tapped trees, but so far there has not been enough sap to justify firing up the evaporator. Franklin says he likes to have about 3,000 gallons on hand before starts boiling.
His experience making syrup goes back to childhood, when he assisted his grandfathers.
“I’ve been in the woods every spring since I was a kid,” Franklin says. He started his own sugarbush about 10 years ago, and in that time, this is one of the latest starts to the season. He says he has had years when the season extended into early April, so he’s not too worried at this point.
“Mother Nature is fun to work with,” Franklin says. “This year is a late start, but that does not mean it will be a poor year.”
Beverly Kuhn and her husband, David, tap about 900 trees on their northern Trumbull County farm and produce about 100 gallons of syrup annually. She says cold weather and other circumstances have prevented them from tapping this year; they hope to tackle that job this weekend if they can get some help with the task.
Beverly said it is later than normal to be tapping trees, but in their case, other issues are preventing them from opening the sugarhouse, where the sap is boiled down. A storm blew off the sugarhouse’s stack, and they have not been able to get someone with a bucket truck to make the repair. Their tractor also broke down, and Beverly has been dealing with health problems.
“It’s been one thing after another,” she says. “It’s been a nightmare.”
Beverly says the days need to warm up but the nights remain below freezing to build the pressure in the trees, which produces sap flow. Depending on what forecast you look at, that could happen this weekend.
The worst scenario would be a quick warming that forces the trees to bud. Once that happens, the quality of the sap rapidly decreases.
Meanwhile, Franklin waits for the weather to warm, the snow to melt, the sap to flow and the mud to ooze beneath his feet. He’s ready.
“I just bought a new pair of boots,” he says.
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LATE GETTING STARTED
Local maple producers wait for the sap to start flowing
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