Long Winter Hurts the Syrup Season

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Created on Friday, 28 March 2014 18:00
Written by Alex Farnworth

maple sugaringBARNET - Vermont's biggest exports include cheese, timber, and one of the locals' favorite breakfast condiments - maple syrup. Almost all of the state's exports are weather driven; long, frosty winters really take a toll on some of these items, especially the latter.

This past weekend, Alan Fogg and his wife, Lorna, hosted a maple sugaring open house on their Barnet farm. At the event, Alan showcased his product in a multitude of ways: bottled syrup, maple sugar on top of snow, donuts, and even pretzels dipped in maple cream... but all of this was from maple syrup produced in 2013.

Fogg has been sugaring for a dozen years and said that 2014 has been his worst year yet, mostly because of the nearly intolerable weather that the Northeast Kingdom has seen this winter.

In order to have a "good" season, Fogg said the "Temperature has not been warm enough. We need temperatures of 45 degrees during the day, and the whole day, not for an hour. Starting at 9:00 in the morning, going right through 6:00 (P.M.)... and you need the temperature at night to get no lower than 20 degrees."

According to News7 meteorologists, the end of this season has been uncharacteristically cold; leaving some farmers, like Fogg, with quite a few problems on their hands.

Fogg has approximately 22 miles worth of tap running through the woods of Barnet. The set-up he uses includes both "tap" wires, which connect and extract sap from the trees while the "lateral" wires connect to all of the taps and transport the sap to the bottom of the site where it is collected in a massive container.

Inclement weather has a negative impact on multiple aspects of the maple industry. If it is too cold, the trees shut down and it is tough to get any sap from them. The cold weather also causes the sap to freeze while it is in the tapping system, causing farmers to have to wait for it to thaw out and slowly run down the tubes. If it freezes while being transported, it could take days for the sap to thaw out, slowing down the amount of production farmers are able to accomplish.

"We've had a few days it [the weather] got up a little over forty [degrees], but it starter out below zero, so it didn't get going in time. The days that it's run [the tapping system], it's only for an hour or two. Normally it would run all day. In fact, other years, it's run as much as five days without stopping." Fogg said.

He also mentioned that it would be ideal to have 15 days with the weather that he previously stated, but so far, there have been zero. With each day of ideal temperatures, Fogg said he can usually get one-hundred gallons worth of syrup, but this year has been quite the struggle.

Luckily, he and his wife Lorna have produced enough in the past, where the were able to make a big enough profit and could keep the taps running, while selling maple products at a reasonable price. This year, Alan has been able to keep the taps running but hasn't sold any syrup yet. Last Sunday, Alan and Lorna were selling a gallon of 2013's maple syrup for $4, but Alan doesn't have much to show for this year. He said he's only produced about five gallons, but it was not up to his standards and he planned to feed it to his cows. According to Alan, if he had to sell what he produced this year and make a profit, he'd be charging close to $200 a gallon, which would be a pretty expensive ingredient for Vermonters.

However, maple sugaring season doesn't have specific dates, and Alan only needs a few good days to be able to turn a profit. He's still hopeful that things turn around this year, but for now, he's still happy with what he's been able to do in the past.