Mar 11 2022 By Valley News
This story by Claire Potter was originally published in the Valley News on March 6.
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Climate change is already impacting the maple sugaring industry
SNIPPETS:
“My father’s saying was that we made the bulk of our syrup in April.
That’s definitely not the case now,” Richardson said.
March brings the harvest now.
The wooden sugar house, first built in the 1960s, is perched at the crest of a snow-covered hill. The Richardsons harvest wood from their forest, bind it into bundles just the right size for the tractor, and pile the bundles above the sugar house.
Inside,
the Richardsons mark the dates and yields each year on a sheet of freezer paper. A three-ring binder in the sugar house holds sheets that go back to 1981. Forty years is short in terms of the 115-year history of the Richardsons on the farm, and even shorter in terms of climatological history. Still, it is enough time to see a change.
The first February boil was in 2012. Since then, six years — including this one — have begun with February boils. ... ...
Warm weather spells trouble. Bacteria swimming in a food source of sugar multiply when below-freezing temperatures don’t keep them down. “Ropey syrup” has a bacteria count so high that it cannot boil; it turns into a phlegmy, sticky pudding.
In 2021, warm weather cut off the season in early April. Sugarers across the Upper Valley saw yields far below their anticipated harvest, and sap production was down between 25% and 50%. In 2012, a stretch of March days when temperatures soared into the seventies scorched away the season.
“It only takes two or three days 65 to 75 degrees and sunny to basically kill the season for you,” said Richard Menge, who sugars at Maple Leaf Farm in Lyme, New Hampshire.
Full article:
https://vtdigger.org/2022/03/11/climate-change-is-already-impacting-the-maple-sugaring-industry/
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