NORTH ANDOVER — Maple sugaring season had its ups and downs this year.
Sap flows when the temperature is below freezing at night and above during the day, so this winter’s warm spells, especially in mid-February, meant that sap production was uneven.
That was the experience of Brad Wakeman of North Andover, who tapped his trees this winter on Saturday, Feb. 3, then collected sap for two weeks.
”The first week was probably the most I’ve ever gotten and then the second week wasn’t as good,” Wakeman said.
He tapped eight maples this year on his property, which he bought 10 years ago and where he remembers seeing buckets collecting sap from the trees when he was a boy. Wakeman has been making syrup there now for six years.
He uses a combination of five-gallon plastic containers, which can be ignored until the following weekend, and two-gallon galvanized buckets that have to be emptied mid-week.
”Typically I do over 40 gallons of sap, and that gets to one gallon of syrup, so it’s a lot of boiling,” Wakeman said.
He lights his boiler outside at sunrise and turns the process into a social occasion, with 30 friends visiting the first weekend this past February and 20 the following weekend. They eat cheese and cookies and add bourbon to mugs dipped into sugar water while the sap boils.
Wakeman transfers the boiled liquid to a large pot at sunset and moves it inside to a stove where it continues boiling until it hits 219 degrees.
”Too long, and it will develop sugar crystals,” he said.
The finished syrup is poured into small containers with labels for “Nathaniel House,” which is the name of the property where Wakeman lives.
”We’re not pancake or waffle eaters,” he said. “We tend to give a lot away.”
The Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary in Topsfield no longer holds flapjack flings, which started in 2010 and featured pancakes served with maple syrup made from trees on their property.
The events drew around 400 people, which overwhelmed the staff and wasn’t feasible during the pandemic, said Laura Coulbourn, regional operations manager.
But they do offer a program called Tap a Tree, in which groups of four people drill holes in maples, insert taps, which are also called spiles, and hang a bucket, then eat pancakes in the sugar house.
The Sanctuary also still conducts maple sugaring tours, which have been led by Regional Property Manager Richard Wolniewicz for 25 years.
”The last one was last Saturday,” March 16, Coulbourn said.
”I believe they started tapping the week of Feb. 14, a little bit later than they normally do. It wasn’t that great of a year. There were a lot of warm spells, it was not up and down, and you need that differential of cold nights and warm days so the sap moves up and down the tree.”
There were also several cold spells that didn’t help, because the temperature didn’t rise enough during the days, Coulbourn said.
But they still managed to tap 91 trees this year and hang 159 buckets on their trunks, to collect 1452 gallons of sap.
”They wound up bottling 41 gallons of syrup and we did three weekends of maple sugaring tours that were busy and full,” Coulbourn said. “We have fresh syrup in half-pints in our gift shop for $8 a bottle, they are very popular. People give them as gifts. It’s like liquid gold.”
Keith Bardwell from Whately, president of the Massachusetts Maple Growers Association, said climate change has definitely had an impact on maple sugaring.
”I used to look forward to tapping around President’s Day, using school vacation as a starting time,” Bardwell said. “Everybody now is starting much earlier and sometimes a month earlier.”
Snow, which insulates the roots of sugar maples and keeps them from freezing, has been in short supply in recent seasons.
”We’re not seeing the vast snow loads that we used to get,” Bardwell said. “I couldn’t even tell you the last year I had to walk around with snow shoes to tap.”
Bardwell has been sugaring for 50 years and operates Brookledge Sugar House, where he makes about 800 gallons of syrup a year and describes his operation as that of a “large hobbyist.”
The Maple Growers Association was founded in 1947 and numbers around 200 members, who held a Maple Weekend March 16 and 17 where the public was invited to visit their sugar houses.
A lot of people got interested in sugaring during the pandemic, Bardwell said. Some of his members make thousands of gallons of syrup each season while many make only five, and the majority are located west of the Connecticut River Valley.
”We certainly have members, more of the smaller ones, that show up in the eastern part of the state,” Bardwell said.
Like Wakeman, he started tapping trees this year on Feb. 3, and said that maple sap has sometimes ebbed as well as flowed.
”I haven’t heard anybody saying it’s a terrible season,” Bardwell said. “What I can tell you is the weather we saw a week ago, where we hit the 70s, has put a damper on it and brought everybody to a complete stop.”
But if the weather has made sugaring less predictable, it doesn’t seem to have affected the yield.
”If a farmer 20 years ago made a thousand gallons, they can still make it,” Bardwell said. “We’re not seeing a loss in that aspect. It’s just you need to be ready to go much earlier than you used to be.”