I have been asked this question a lot over the last three weeks even from experienced maple producers. The answer is no. Its March 7th and we have yet to really get the season started aside from two boils in February. The previous two Februaries have been warm and I guess people have short memories. March and April are where we traditionally make the bulk of our syrup and really the end of March and beginning of April is where we get a Big Runs. On average we make more syrup in April than March.
It looks like we have a change in the weather pattern starting today. I know we are all excited for it. We’ve been trying to keep busy the last three weeks and its getting tough. Everyone just wants the season to start. We’ve kept busy by checking for leaks, we did collect about 4000 gallons of sap last week we are holding onto, making drop lines, and replacing plastice valves in the woods with stainless. Most of the PVC handle valves get broken after about 5 years of the sun deteriorating them. We had to carry channel locks through the woods to turn them so we finally took them all out this week.
It doesnt look like we will have a real run until mid to end of next week but we should get a little sap this weekend. I see some warm upper 40’s coming and I really hope that sticks. I even see a 51 right now which would be awesome. There is still plenty of time for that the change tho. Our trees love warm weather so if we got some nice warm temps to get things thawing it would be great for our mid March runs. I just really hope that we don’t get another prolonged period of cold after this.
Ill let you all know what is happening in a few weeks.
