This remarkable stretch of unseasonably-warm temperatures here in central NY has many folks concerned about the maple syrup crop this year. Ideally, the sap runs best when nights are spent in the mid 20’s, and days are spent in the mid to upper 30s. Of course, we’ve had anything but those kinds of temperatures recently. Additionally, my 7-day forecast features temperatures well-above normal, even approaching the upper 70s, by early next week.
So, with all this potential “doom and maple gloom” in the forecast, we went down to Cedarvale Maple Syrup Co. in Syracuse to find out how this season is going. Karl Wiles, the owner, said this year has been fantastic. “Well, I feel like we dodged a bullet. We tapped about two weeks early, so now we are finishing about two weeks early, and we are getting pretty close to an average crop.”
While the jump-start on the season has proven helpful for local farmers, not all maple-producing areas are “in the clear.” Helen Thomas, executive director for the New York State Maple Producers explained that proper temperatures are crucial to good maple syrup. “We don’t really want it to go above 45 degrees in the daytime, it gets a little warmer than that, and you start having yeast grow in the sap.”
That yeast growing in the sap produces a darker sap with less sugar, which is ultimately less useful for the types of products maple growers hope to produce. Other major maple syrup producing areas such as Quebec and Maine may have a big struggle with just that problem this year due to the lack of snowfall and quickly-warming temperatures. Wiles mentioned to me that this is great news for our local maple syrup businesses, since nearly two-thirds of all the maple syrup in the world comes from Quebec. This favorable outlook comes just in time for our local maple weekend, coming up this weekend and next weekend at over 140 maple syrup producers across the state.
