Sugarmakers hope for cold nights, high yield

Vermont's sugarmakers hope the weather will cooperate — a real concern after the state's $700-million ski industry suffered through an abnormally warm winter.

“We’re so dependent on a couple of degrees,” said David Marvin, who runs Butternut Mountain Farm, a packager and producer of maple syrup.

Vermont is the largest producer of maple syrup in the United States. The state produced 1.39 million gallons of syrup in 2015, according to the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, more than twice as much as New York. For a successful season, the state's estimated 1,000 sugarmakers need frozen nights and warm days. Those freeze-thaw cycles get the sap running. Too cold, and the sap doesn’t run. Too warm, and sugarmakers can’t get the volume they need to produce the gallons of syrup that pump millions into the state's economy.

"People are definitely nervous about the weather," said Matthew Gordon, the executive director of the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association, especially after a warm stretch this past week. Burlington hit 67 degrees on Wednesday, a record high according to the National Weather Service. Average temperatures in March are usually about 40.

It's still too early in March to say for sure what the season will look like for maple producers, Gordon said. They are still hoping for nighttime temperatures to drop below freezing to get the sap to flow.

"It's not going to be a phenomenal year," Gordon said.

Warm weather also causes the trees to bud, which can have a major impact on the taste of the syrup, said Henry Marckres, who’s been the Agency of Agriculture’s maple syrup specialist for the past 30 years, agrees.

“It actually tastes like a Tootsie roll,” he said, about the “buddy” syrup the trees make when it gets too warm. "It tastes chocolately.”

But he hasn’t found any off-flavors this year, not yet.

This has been the warmest winter on record, said Scott Whittier, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Burlington station. The normal average temperature is around 26 degrees Fahrenheit from November to February. This year, the average is 33.5 degrees.

Last year, the same period averaged around 23 degrees.

“It’s extremely abnormal to see that kind of departure,” Whitter said. He attributed the winter to a particularly strong El Niño pattern. El Niño, a weather oscillation caused by warm water in the Pacific, causes drier, warmer winters in the northeastern U.S.

The El Niño has weakened a bit, Whittier said, but remains strong, leading him to expect above-average temperatures for March. He also expects a stretch of unseasonably warm temperatures over in few days.

That could be bad news for Marvin and the other sugarmakers, especially if warmer temperatures come with abundant sunshine, like what happened in 2012, when a string of warm March days ended the season.

The maple industry in Vermont is more than just syrup, Marckres said. It’s also the candy and creams made from maple. Producers hire seasonal workers. There are also companies manufacturing and selling maple tapping equipment.

In 2013, the maple industry contributed between $317 and $330 million to Vermont’s economy, according to a study done last August by the Center for Rural Studies funded by the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association. The same study showed that it’s been a boom time for the maple industry: It’s grown 131 percent between 1992 and 2014.

Though this year’s warm winter was caused by El Niño, climate change is having an effect on the sugaring season in the long run, according to Dr. Tim Perkins, who directs the University of Vermont’s Proctor Maple Research Center.

Today’s sugaring season begins one week earlier and ends ten days earlier than the seasons of 40 or 50 years ago, Perkins said.

But Perkins doesn't read too much into the warm temperatures of this particular winter.

“It can affect production by inserting uncertainty into the minds of the producers,” he said. Producers need to tap at the perfect time — too soon and the holes dry out, too late and they miss out on good sap.

Those Vermonters who stake their livelihoods on the ebbs and flows of maple sap are now just waiting and hoping.

Michael Howrigen’s family has been making syrup for generations.

“We have a lot of time,” he said. Last year, it all came in April. Last week's warm stretch didn't hurt a thing, Howrigen said, since the weather has been overcast over his Fairfax farm.

When people asked Howrigen’s father what kind of year it’s going to be, he said, his father always answered the same way:

“I’ll tell you in April or May.”

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Contact Jess Aloe at jaloe@freepressmedia.com or 802-660-1874. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jess_aloe