When is the best time to tap sugar maples?
Large-scale maple-syrup
operations in New England like to have all their taps in place around
the first of March. But we southerners can get a head start on the
season and tap earlier. As you can see, sapsucker holes in our favorite
sugar maple are already bleeding sap, so why let the tree's sweet juices
go to waste?
Interestingly, while I
was researching the timing of maple tapping, I stumbled across a study
in which researchers tapped some trees early (in late January or early
February), some at the March 1 time most traditional farmers aim for,
and some late. While late-tapped trees did
produce lower yields, both early and midseason taps netted the same
amount of liquid. Why? Early taps catch sap that midseason taps miss,
but those early holes tend to close up before the flow is finished and
thus miss the latest sap. So, it's really up to you when you want to
tap, and for us, earlier is better --- there's much less to do on our
farm in January and February than in March.
Mark and I had a lot of fun tapping our sugar maple
last year, and we considered expanding beyond one measly spile in 2015.
However, my usual morning walk goes past only this one sugar maple, and
I'm not sure if I have the gumption to check on trees daily if they
aren't on my normal route. Maybe if I get antsy waiting for Abigail to pop out some kids, though, I might expand my walks and our maple syruping operation.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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