Skunked Again: Maple syrup season

Just over a week ago we hadn’t gotten pounded by snow yet and it seemed like a good idea to tap a small grove of maples behind my house. Though a little research would have told me we were getting 6-8 inches of snow a few days later, I probably would have gone ahead and done it anyway. The prior weeks had been warm, too warm, and I was getting anxious to take advantage of any sap that might be flowing.

Just about everyone knows maple syrup season takes place at the end of winter when the days are warm and the nights are cold. The tree converts starch into a sugar water, or sucrose, which we can collect and boil down to make syrup. What a lot of people don’t realize is that the oncoming spring and appearance of buds on the tree can have an adverse effect on the taste of the sap. If the spring comes too quickly and we jump right in to warm days and warm nights, we could miss out on a good chunk of maple season. Has this winter’s funky weather ruined our prime maple syrup weeks? It’s hard to say.

Some outfits across Maine started towards the beginning February and there are others, like me, who got started a couple weeks later.

As a kid growing up my family harvested maple syrup, a fun and rewarding outdoors activity. Several girthy sugar maples which bordered an old field next to our house served as our main source of sap water. Parallel to these giant trees was an 18th-century rock wall that was built as the farmer removed unwanted stones from the soil. We’d walk along this wall and then up to each tree along the way; my father would drill the holes and I’d find a good rock to hammer the spiles in. At the end of the year my Dad had fun engineering a good way to boil down the sap, finally satisfied years later with a specially-built fireplace that accommodated a long boiling pan. Now I find myself in the same position, constantly thinking of designs for the fireplace I’ll have to build in a few weeks.

When I drilled through the bark and into the sapwood of the trees behind my house, the sugar water began dripping out at a constant rate, and I rushed to attach the spile/tube/bucket assembly in order to collect it. I heard the steady “thud, thud, thud” of the drops hitting the bottom of the bucket—maple season had begun.

Looking to produce enough maple syrup to keep myself and close ones from buying the 2 percent stuff at the supermarket, I figure I should be just fine tapping six or seven trees. I encourage others to look around their yard for maple trees over 12 inches in diameter. Any maple will give you the sugar water you are looking for, but the Sugar Maple, naturally, has a higher sugar content. In the end, however, a maple is a maple and is going to give you delicious syrup that beats imitation stuff every day of the week.

The maple syrup industry is not a new one. Here in Maine we push out an average of 356,000 gallons a year, making us the second largest producer in New England. Vermont tops the charts at 983,000 gallons and our distant neighbor New York pumps out a surprising average of 438,000 gallons. I think it would surprise a lot of Mainers to hear we were only the third largest maple producers in the north east and that doesn’t include Canada, whose maple syrup industry is three times larger than the United State’s. Though we may not be able to claim we make the most maple syrup here in Maine, we can still quietly brag that ours is better than the rest. [Numbers courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture]

Franklin County is a great place to look for maples, which thrive in wet, but well-drained fertile soils. If you don’t have any in your back yard, you can always ask a friend if they got a few trees to spare! Happy syruping!

Interesting tidbit: Sugar Maple seedlings generally only germinate in colder conditions, around 34 degrees Fahrenheit, and I think this is a major factor in their slow migration north; though sugar maples produce an astonishing amount of seeds, seeds with a superb germination rate, they won’t have a chance if cold enough temperatures are not present (<50 F).