Our 87th maple season comes to a close. We started tapping on March 5 and did the last collecting on April 4. Starting pulling taps on April 6 and finished all bottling on April 9. This was a normal length season. The two week cold spell had us doubting just what kind of season it would be. But in the end we made 50 gallons of syrup. Our “normal” is 60 gallons, but anyone who makes a crop dependent on nature knows that “normal” is always changing. We only collected 1640 gallons of sap so our ratio of sap to syrup was 32.8 gallons of sap for one gallon of syrup. This is good. If the sap had been less sweet we would have made less syrup. We are happy with what we have. We talked with one producer who put out 3000 taps but got only 100 gallons of syrup. That would be discouraging. The week before Easter was the best run of the season with sap every other day. Actually it was nice to have a day in between so we could get caught up.
The woods comes to life over the next month with spring flowers and leaves coming out. Its very pretty. In September we start to make firewood again. In October is the North American Maple Syrup Producers annual meeting. Its in Trios Rivers, Quebec this year. There are some very large producers in Quebec: 50,000 up to 100,000 taps. We want to see these operations.
We expect to be back here again next February or March for our 88th season. We hope you will join us here too.