ERIN – Maple syrup season is here early, and that means spring isn’t far behind, according to local maple syrup farmers.
“I can’t believe the sap’s already running,” said Derek Elliott, who owns Elliott Tree Farm, a small-scale maple syrup producer in Erin.
“I guess Wiarton Willie was right,” he said.
The season begins for maple syrup farmers – or sugarmakers – when the trees start to come out of dormancy, with above zero temperatures during the day and below zero at night causing the sap to flow.
“The trees and nature tell us when it’s time to go,” he said. “We’re very much attuned and connected to mother nature.”
Typically, this starts around the end of February, but Elliott began tapping his trees on Feb. 10.
Tapping early doesn’t impact the quality at all, but it doesn’t come without risks.
Tapping too early can potentially cause the tap holes to heal before the season is over, stopping the syrup from flowing, said Brent Klassen, who owns Heartwood Farm & Cidery with wife Val Steinmann.
Heartwood uses a vacuum system, meaning it’s less likely this will happen. But Klassen said producers who don’t would need to determine whether the risk is worth it.
If you don’t tap early, he said, you also risk missing the season.
“There have been seasons before that apparently had just been a week long; that’s all the time you get where you have these freezing/thawing conditions,” he said. “So the downside of not tapping is, now it’s a short season, you might miss it.”
Klassen said he thinks, like Heartwood and Elliott Tree Farms, a lot of nearby producers have decided to tap early and see what happens.
“We're at the mercy of the conditions,” he said.
Still, this is the earliest Heartwood has ever tapped – three weeks early, in fact. They’re feeling confident though.
Steinmann said it looks like the conditions are going to be fairly stable and perfect for sap flow – above zero during the day and below zero at night.
“This feels like spring is just a month early,” Steinmann said.
But regardless of how early you tap, poor weather conditions are always a chance you have to take.
If the weather stays below zero during the day, the sap won’t flow, which does typically happen sporadically throughout the season – but the sap will begin flowing again once the weather warms up.
“It’s when you have the opposite effect, above freezing for a full week, the sap won’t flow. Meanwhile, the trees come out of dormancy, the buds start to swell because the weather’s warm all the time.”
Once that happens, she said the sap begins to taste different because of the complex metabolic things the trees are doing to create leaf growth.
“So, at that point, we have to stop collecting sap,” she said.
The season typically ends around the beginning of April or end of March, as the trees begin to bud.
But this year, Klassen said all bets are off.
“Because the season is starting three weeks early, is it going to end three weeks early? Is it going to last just as long as normal? It’s really hard to say.”
But Klassen said regardless of what happens, he loves the season.
“Climate change is real, it seems to be happening. But at the same time, you have to sort of embrace this stuff with a sense of joy. I always feel good when the sap starts running,” he said.
Because of the early arrival of the season, people have already begun buying tickets for Elliott Tree Farm’s maple syrup experience, where they offer a pancake breakfast and learn about the history of maple syrup, along with a tasting and trail walk to check sap buckets.
Heartwood is opening up their syrup experience early as well, which focuses more on education, taking people to the bush and showing them how everything works.
Both their products are available primarily on the farm.
