Well, it’s done for some people apparently!
The other day Erik’s Dad called me up (expect an hour-long conversation) and asked me how our trees were doing. I told him they were fine, that we were glad we tapped early, but the season is going to be a long one!
He sounded shocked. Then he told me about a news story just on TV about the maple syrup season being very poor this year. A maple man in Ada they had interviewed said that the season was about over thanks to poor conditions.
He may in fact, be correct. We have roughly 175 taps out right now. Out of the 175, five are Red Maple trees. The others are all blacks and sugars. Reds and silvers are different than blacks and sugars in that they both produce large red buds that turn into red flowers (and probably irritate your allergies).
If I’m remembering correctly, the reds and silvers produce fruit (those helicopter seeds kids love to play with) in the spring, while the sugars and blacks produce them in the fall.
If you are curious as to whether you have a red or silver maple, look up right now. Red maples will have extra large buds, with silvers being slightly smaller. A pair of binoculars will help you see if the buds have “burst” and flowered. Or simply look at the ground for fallen buds.
Warm temperatures in the 50’s or higher will cause the buds to swell and burst into flower — thus ending your maple syruping for that tree. Anyone tapping a red or silver must constantly check their sap. Sap from a budding maple will turn “buddy”, which is a bitter, off taste you DON’T want!
More often than not, the red or silver maple will simply stop flowing sap.
With all that useful information lodged in your brain, now lets look at our tree tapping results.
I have a handy little picture of two buckets of sap from two different trees, but my phone’s memory is full and won’t let me send the photo to my computer, so you’ll just have to close your eyes to picture it.
Wait, no, don’t do that — you won’t be able to read this!
So, 170 black/sugar maples and five Red Maples. The 170 have ranged in bucket values accrued over two days from one gallon to three gallons (in a five gallon bucket). The Red Maples? One-quarter of a gallon or less. More like one to two cupfuls.
Wait, don’t panic! You are correct to assume the low levels of sap mean the trees have flowered. I’ve found branches with open buds on the ground. Those five buckets have all been dumped and will be taken down so no one mistakenly empties them next week.
For a maple syrup producer who relies on red and silver maples, they most likely HAVE ended their season. Our neighbors across the street have tapped a swamp full of massive Silver Maples (as they do every year for fun). We tapped silver and reds our first 3 years doing maple syrup. Those in the swamp/wet areas have a hard time thawing enough to flow well, and then they suddenly “pop” in warm weather. Last year I saved our season of 150 buckets by moving them all to the blacks and sugars we are tapping right now. That gave our season an additional 2 weeks.
I’m not sure if our neighbors have been able to collect enough sap to even cook down. Hopefully they did, because most likely they, like the guy in Ada, are done.
As for US? We are cooking down another 260 gallons of sap tomorrow. I’ve got another 100 gallons or so to collect today. I have checked the long-range forecasts and it appears our maple syrup season will last well into April (usually is done by April 1). That would give us a full 8 weeks. That would be a GOOD syrup season for us.
One more bonus . . .
Our syrup so far seems to have a kettle corn flavor which will probably mature into caramel corn flavor. Very light, sweet and buttery with notes of vanilla. Saturday we will get our first round of syrup and will know then EXACTLY what the flavor scale is!