Maple syrup farmers are tapping their trees earlier than ever this season. The sooner-than-expected start date follows a remarkably mild winter and a string of unusually warm springs in recent years.
Tom Stehr of Sugarbush Hill Maple Farm in Huntsville, Ont., is taking notice. “The weather seems to be warming up in the springtime earlier. We have a maple weekend on the first weekend of April every year,” says Stehr. “In the first four to five years we had days where it was -5°C, but last year it was 9°C.”
Along with warming temperatures, inconsistent ones are also proving challenging for maple syrup farmers. “We don’t get the same patterns of weather that we used to. Now, we go from having a brief spell of -20°C, to boom, it’s 5°C,” says John Williams, executive director at the Ontario Maple Syrup Producers’ Association (OMSPA) and owner of Williams Farm in Wyebridge, Ont.
This is especially challenging for maple syrup farmers because proper tapping relies on optimal (and fairly consistent) weather conditions. While it varies from region to region, Ontario’s tapping window typically manifests during late February or early March, when nighttime temperatures reach around -10°C and daytime temperatures hit 0°C, explains Williams.
Sap begins to flow when temperatures reach 5°C in the day, and -3°C to 5°C at night, he adds. In the past, these conditions would persist for four to six weeks as temperatures gradually warmed, but with the recent extreme fluctuations in temperatures, this key period in syrup production is being disturbed. In Midland, near Williams’ operation, temperatures reached 17°C on March 11, far warmer than the below-zero temps syrup farmers are in search of.
One solution? “You just have to tap earlier,” says Stehr.
And that’s exactly what Andy Straughan did, who owns Sugarstone Farm, a sugarbush located about an hour northeast of Parry Sound, Ont. “This year, sap ran on February 23, which was the earliest we’ve ever done it,” he says. “We didn’t have frost on the ground this year in our area, which meant it was a quick start once we got those 5°C, -5°C temperatures.”
But tapping earlier has its drawbacks, especially when you’re contending with unreliable temps. “A few warm days in a row speeds up the healing process for the tap holes and can really cut your season down,” says Williams. The holes begin to close because microbial activity in the tree becomes more active in warm temperatures, he explains. “This happens any time you get into double-digit temperatures, and especially if you don’t have freeze-ups at night.”
Williams explains it’s better to have lower temperatures during syrup season for a whole host of reasons. “Cold winters help with pest control and put frost on the ground so that when things start to warm, it slows the warming trend down. Also, the snow provides soil with water for the trees to produce sap,” he says.
If all of this has you stressing about syrupless pancakes, don’t worry. Technologies that effectively combat the impacts of climate change on syrup production already exist and are widely used across Ontario.
For example, high-power vacuum systems that pull sap from trees are used by most mid- to large-scale syrup operations. These increase sap yield and lower the stakes if a farmer can’t tap at the best time. “If you’re still using buckets or tubing that only flow with gravity, then you’ve got about a month from when you tap until those tap holes start sealing up,” says Williams. “But with the new vacuum system, we’re able to stretch that out to two months or more, so there’s a little less worry.”
Other handy tools include reverse-osmosis machines, which decrease the sap’s water content by up to 85 per cent before boiling, meaning less carbon emissions during boiling and minimized yield losses for the farmer.
As for Williams, the director of OMSPA, he’s optimistic: “While we’re concerned about climate change, we’re not worried that maple syrup production is going to end tomorrow. We have a lot of tools to mitigate the consequences of climate change as we move forward.”
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