MEXICO — Tappers are gearing up for maple syrup season, but the sap hasn’t started running yet because of unseasonably cold temperatures and deep snow pressed against the trees.

Ray and Ann Carver of Mexico began tapping trees Wednesday when temperatures topped 40 degrees. They will place 400 taps this month.

“Nothing is running yet, but we are not on a vacuum system,” Ann Carver said. “We will be out tapping all day Saturday and Sunday.”

The family owns and operates Swift River Maple at 275 Swift River Road in Mexico.

“One down, 399 to go,” Ray Carver said Thursday afternoon after tapping a tree behind their house with the couple’s 7-year-old daughter, Emily, and 11-year-old son, Wyatt.

Maine’s traditional Maple Sunday, when syrup farmers educate the public about their operations, provide product samples and sell what they make, is just two weeks away.

“There’s already been some activity to get ready for it,” John Bott, spokesman for the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, said Thursday morning in Augusta.

Maine’s sap season normally runs four to six weeks, but just when it actually starts is controlled by Mother Nature, Bott said.

Last year, unseasonable cold left sap still frozen in trees when many syrup farmers began tapping.

“Last year, there wasn’t any sap on Maine Maple Sunday, so some farmers used water in their evaporators” to explain how syrup is created from sap, he said. Several farmers used syrup from their 2013 stock or bought syrup from larger producers so the public could buy it locally.

Once the season starts, it’s crunch time for sap-tappers trying to make enough syrup for Maine Maple Sunday.

“This year, Maine Maple Sunday will celebrate its 32nd anniversary on March 22, with approximately 100 sugarhouses participating throughout Maine,” Bott said. “Sugarhouses will be open for visitors to enjoy syrup and candy sampling, demonstrations of making syrup, sugarbush tours and a variety of other activities.”

Wayne Slattery of the West Minot Sugarhouse said Thursday morning that the season hadn’t started, but he was getting ready for it. Slattery has just over 6,000 taps in trees and leaves his lines up through the winter.

He worried that the season might be similar to last year.

“It was a short season,” he said. “Normally, you’d have 20 to 25 days to make syrup, but last year was bad. We had between 12 and 13 days and just got half a crop. It was a pretty poor year.”

So far, temperatures have not been conducive to sap flow. Not only is deep snow hampering flow by keeping the sap frozen, it’s giving tappers an arduous struggle just to reach the trees where they have to shovel out enough snow to set a tap.

“You have to wear snowshoes to get out there and it’s a bear,” Slattery said. “It’s pretty tough going.”

Normally, Slattery said the season will start in West Minot on March 8 or 10 and continue into the first week of April.

“We’re supposed to get a warm-up next week, so it might be good,” he said. “We need days with high temperatures in the 40s and nights in the 20s to 25 degrees to make it conducive for sap flow.”

National Weather Service meteorologist Eric Sinsabaugh of Harrison said he will be tapping trees behind his house Sunday. Some good sugaring weather is coming next week, with lows in the 20s at night and temperatures in the upper 30s to lower 40s during the days, he said.

“Unfortunately, it isn’t going to last,” he said. 

Sinsabaugh said the nation has been locked in a weather pattern since last November including an unusually resilient large ridge of high pressure along the West Coast and a large low pressure trough along the East Coast, keeping the jet stream stuck between the two.

“It may be the result of the warming that we’ve been seeing over the last 20 to 30 years, but I’ve never seen such a persistent ridge on the West Coast,” Sinsabaugh said. “When we get a huge ridge like this riding up into Alaska, it brings the air flow down from the (North Pole) and we have very cold winters.”

Overall, Maine maple syrup production is up from a few years ago, although last year’s numbers aren’t out yet, Bott said. According to last year’s study by University of Maine economics professor Todd Gabe, Maine’s maple industry contributes an estimated $27.7 million directly to the Maine economy.

The study additionally revealed that Maine’s maple syrup industry, which counts the licensed producers, and sales at retail food stores and businesses affected by Maine Maple Sunday, generates 567 full- and part-time jobs, and $17.3 million in labor income.

tkarkos@sunmediagroup.net

Governor to herald start of Maine’s maple syrup season

AUGUSTA — At 11 a.m. Tuesday, March 10, Gov. Paul R. LePage will tap a maple tree at the Blaine House to signify the beginning of Maine’s maple syrup season and to help promote the industry, John Bott, spokesman for the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, wrote Thursday in an email.

The event will serve as a prelude to Maine Maple Sunday on March 22.