Early Preparations Pay Off This Year

By Wiley Wood

Sap flow in Norfolk’s sugar maples started three to four weeks early this year. Syrup producers who caught the early, unexpected flow had a good season. “We tapped our trees in January and started collecting in early February,” says Jude Mead, of Mead’s Maple Syrup, “the earliest we’ve ever started.”

At Great Mountain Forest, which built a new sugarhouse this year and started maple-syrup production again after a five-year hiatus, sap collection started two weeks later. “We’ve kept records for 65 years,” says Jody Bronson, manager of Great Mountain Forest, “and our season has always been from the end of February to early April. Our first collection this year was on February 17.” Yet despite starting ten days early, the season was a short one and the number of collections about half the normal number.

Meanwhile Mead and her husband had strong sap flows from the start. Caught off guard, they were never able to put in their last 800 taps. “Some of our sugarbushes weren’t tapped at all,” says Mead, “but we boiled more in February than ever.”

Expectations for a record season were foiled, however, by abnormally high temperatures at the end of the first week in March. “It was depressing to look at the Accuweather forecast,” says Mead. Cold nights and warm days are the great pump that makes sap flow, but a short spell of warmer weather doesn’t necessarily hurt. “They were projecting almost two weeks of high temperatures ahead,” says Mead. “The season ended abruptly.”

The cold, clear sap that flowed abundantly in February turned milky during the second week in March. “The buds popped and we started to get an off-flavor syrup,” says Mead. At Great Mountain Forest, which maintains a detailed log of unfolding natural events, Bronson recorded red maples budding on March 9, a full three weeks ahead of schedule. “The bacteria count was high, the sugar content low, and the tap holes starting to dry up,” says Bronson.

A group of cooperating families that operate a sugarbush along Grantville Road in South Norfolk had largely the same experience. “We started in mid-February and produced a third to a half as much syrup as last year,” says Adair Mali. “And we pulled our buckets in mid-March, whereas last year we collected and boiled into April.”

To the Meads, who harvested the early flow, the shift of the season to an earlier date had its benefits. “This is the earliest we’ve ever gotten the saphouse cleaned up, the tubing rinsed and coiled, and the equipment washed,” says Mead, already looking to strawberry season.