Whatever material was at hand or could be crafted was used to create the exterior of the maple syrup boiling house. People called the structures in their woods which they used for a month or so each year by deservedly humble names: sugar shack or sugar shanty. By the time we sold the farm in 1978, our family was tapping 500 trees in our woods each year, and collecting sap from those trees repeatedly over 4-6 weeks.Ī typical sugar shanty from the early 20th century. He hitched the horses, Dick and Daisy, to an articulated bobsled (a winter work sled), loaded it with stacks of cans, a hand drill, hammer, and spouts and began the slow trek through the woods, tapping trees and hanging buckets for hours at a time on the snow-covered, uneven ground. On the Eck farm in the hills of Wyoming county outside Attica, our dad started tapping in the family sugar bush when he figured the weather seemed right, with daytime temperatures in the 30's or 40's followed by cold nights. Until the Civil War, maple syrup was the primary sweetener for the northeast. Pioneers found that maple syrup and its variant products such as granulated maple sugar were excellent substitutes for cane sugar that was impossible to obtain or impossibly expensive for subsistence farmers. They collected sap by slashing a tree and collecting the sap during mid-March through mid-April each spring after the weather warmed enough to start the sap flowing in the sugar maple trees but before temperatures prompted the first leaf buds to expand. They determined that the sugar maple tree, a particular species that only grows in eastern North America, had a sweet sap. Maple syrup was produced by Native Americans as their sweetener before the land was settled by pioneers. (Its hook below for hanging the can is missing.) Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Service put out a report titled, "2012 Maple Season Too Warm.Old-fashioned cast iron spout used on the Eck farm. In 2012, despite sugar-makers in New England placing 5 percent more taps, a spate of 75-degree temperatures in March led to a 27 percent drop in maple syrup production over the previous season. However, the impact of warming temperatures cannot be ignored. "We need to pay attention to climate change but when we look at what maple producers have done to overcome the impacts of climate change, it's clear that they are adjusting," Childs says. Isselhardt notes that a forest where at least 25 percent of the trees are species other than maple can help protect against pests.Īdvances in vacuum tubing technology, which has been around since the 1970s and uses pressure to suck sap out of the tree rather than relying on gravity for sap to drip from taps into metal buckets, continues to expand, helping bolster sap collection, according to Stephen Childs, New York State maple specialist at Cornell University. Sustainable forest management can also protect the health and longevity of sugar maples. Improved sanitation practices, such as changing taps and tubing to reduce contamination and decrease bacteria buildup in the tap hole, and exploring the potential to collect sap in the fall could help preserve the harvest. Still, "sugar-makers tend to be very proactive and there are lots of management approaches they can take - and are taking - to limit the potential climate effects," he says. Sugaring season used to kick off around March but has started as early as January in the last few seasons because the weather is warmer earlier. The Salt Grade Inflation In The Maple Syrup Aisle: Now Everything Is An 'A'įor sap to flow, temperatures need to be below freezing at night and above freezing during the day. production levels, which totaled 4.27 million gallons last season. Research published in 2017 also found that climate change could cause sugar maple habitat to decline and suggests that it would take an additional five million taps to maintain current U.S. The climate change model looked at the most extreme scenario, which assumes carbon dioxide emissions will remain at their current levels for the next century. Sugar maple trees are productive for 100-plus years, but that could all be changing. A sugar maple tree trunk must be at least 10 inches in diameter at chest height to be tapped trees over 15 inches in diameter can accommodate two taps four taps can be installed in trees over 25 inches in diameter, according to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. sugar maple tap produced about one-quarter of a gallon, while Vermont's taps flowed to a little more than one-third of a gallon.īut it takes time for a tree to reach the right size for tapping. The Salt Why Some Canadian Maple Syrup Producers Are Defying Their 'Cartel'
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