Pre and Post Season

A Different Kind of Maple Season for Ohio Producers

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Thanks to Les Ober for contributing his annual state of the maple season address.  I also wanted to note the following: Due to disruptions in federal weather/climate data as well as some OSU personnel transitions, the Growing Degree Days calendar was a bit glitchy throughout the season.  Folks are working hard to ensure the GDD tracker is back up and running efficiently just as soon as possible.

It was another unusual maple season across Ohio.  Unlike the last few years when the season started in January, this year Mother Nature flipped the script.  Ohio was really stuck in the middle as far as weather was concerned.  While northeast Ohio was on the cold side, central and southern Ohio benefited from warm air occasionally pushing up from the Gulf. This gave producers in the mid-region of the state an extra week or two of very favorable maple production weather, and in most cases, resulted in above normal production.  After a very cold January and February, most Northeast Ohio producers started tapping at the end of February or first week in March.  Southern and central Ohio started tapping a few weeks earlier from first of February until around Valentine’s Day.  No matter which part of Ohio you examine, tapping was 3-4 weeks later than previous years kicking off a short but productive season.

A productive season was a blessing, considering the poor seasons that many producers experienced in the past 2 years.  For Northeast Ohio producers, the season held out until the third week of March due to a late influx of cold air that barely overcame a couple of warm spells.  Many Northeast Ohio producers managed to pull out a full month’s production, overcoming the unusual swings in temperature.  When you have extreme changes in weather, you often experience large volumes of sap coming in at one time.  The Ray Gingerich family at Deer Run Maple in Colebrook, Ohio, reported an average crop for the season.  Dan Gingerich said that they made over 70% of their crop in 2 weeks.  As another example, the Ohio State-Mansfield sugarbush boasted its second-best year of syrup production in just 17 days from tapping until the lines were closed.  This proves what my father told me many times, “You can make a lot of syrup in two weeks.”

Ohio consumers will not have to worry about a shortage of pure Ohio Maple Syrup in 2025.  The syrup tended to be a little darker than last year, but the flavor has been very good.  Last year the Brix level of the sap was low, 1.5 % in many woods.  This year Brix was higher, around 2 percent, and that helped improve the yield per tap.  Most stores and shops throughout the state are stocked up with a variety of maple products.  The popularity of Maple Value-Added products continues to grow.  This includes flavor infused Bourbon, Vanilla, and Cinnamon syrups. Although the Value-Added products are made with Pure Maple Syrup, remember they cannot be sold as pure maple syrup because of the added flavor.  In fact, there is now a separate class at local, state, and regional syrup contests for judging these products.  The most popular has been Bourbon Barrel Aged Syrup which is not infused but rather aged in Burbon barrels which enhances the flavor of maple syrup with the taste of aged Bourbon.  Many Ohio producers have mastered the art of maple syrup flavor enhancement and are now including them in their product line.

In the Eastern States after a late start, fighting heavy snow, and extremely cold weather, the season is shaping up to be average to slightly above average.  The 2025 season is just now wrapping up for New York and the New England producers except for the furthest north sugarbushes.  It has been a mixed bag in southern New England, and parts of Michigan and Wisconsin suffered catastrophic ice storms that hurt this year’s production and wreaked havoc that will be felt for years to come.  The real surprise was the Mid-Atlantic States in places like West Virginia that benefited from the unusual weather patterns.  While most were frozen solid, they had enough warmth to keep the sap running but not so much warm temperatures that sanitation suffered.  The result was an excellent crop.

All and all, what started out looking like a busted season, ended up being average or slightly above.  Over the last five years, Ohio maple producers have learned how to adapt to the weather.  In a way, it was good to see a more traditional winter.  This is something we have not experienced in a long time.

Let the Sap Flow!

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We got tapped in a couple weeks ago with a blip of warmer weather, but we are officially in production mode now.  A bit of sun yesterday afternoon and temperatures nearing 40 got enough sap moving to start a system flush which we completed this morning.  7 hours of hunting leaks later and we’re in the green with sap filling up the tank as I type.

It is hard to know what the season will hold, but it sure feels more “normal” than the past several seasons.  Our growing degree days are still at ZERO, the 2-week forecast looks favorable, and we’ve got a good system that will be running even tighter after we search Line 3 for leaks in the morning.

Dealing with Storm Damage

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A big thanks to Kathy Smith, Program Director of Extension-Forestry, for putting together this great resource of how to cope with storm damage.  Unfortunately, it has been a reality for far too many maple producers in the past 3 years, and I’m sure for many more before then.

Click back into our archives to read a post after the 2022 derecho that ripped through north-central Ohio in mid June.

Lots of work went into creating this resource-rich PDF, so I’ll simply link it below for download and use.  Enjoy!

Storm Damage Article – Smith & Karns 2024

Glad to See It Come, Glad to See It Go

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Thanks for Les’ contribution last Monday in his post – Is February the New March?  This is a more Mansfield-centric take on the 2024 season with a more in-depth analysis of statewide Growing Degree Days to compliment last week’s content.

What a season!  That sums it up in all the best and worst ways.  I stand by the words I typed in my 2/19 post – I believe we nailed our tapping date just about perfect.  The first run to follow was a marathon of 7 or 8 straight days, and the second run of the year culminated in our making syrup off the new OSU teaching evaporator for the first time ever.  Though many producers’ woods performed below average in terms of sap sugar, our Brix registered consistently at 2.0.  Talk about some highs.

We knew better.  The weather folks are not infallible, but there was no denying the forecast that lurked.  Warm, warm, and more warm.  But unexpectedly, February 21st was the death blow for our season.  While we were over at Malabar Farms helping out with an NRCS workshop on maple, our pump decided to quit working.  Without vacuum, the productive days of our season were over.  With a full season, we would likely have stayed tapped in until March 4th and posted one of our better season totals.  As it turned out in reality, the 2024 season ended on a low.

Looking more broadly around the state, the progression of Growing Degree Days (GDDs) was alarmingly early yet again.  If there any producers still resistant to the idea of tapping earlier than more traditional dates, then I don’t know what it will take to change minds.

Observe – Click Play for an animation of GDDs from 2021 (below).  Pay attention to 2 data points in particular.  First, the GDDs accumulated through March.  Second, the scale of GDDs on the legend.

Now, you don’t even need to see a similar video of 2024’s GDDs to know we covered lots more ground in fewer days than the previous year’s example.  Long story short, earlier AND hotter.  Hello sap season double whammy, goodbye sanitation!  I don’t believe many producers will be heard pining – “Boy! What I wouldn’t give for another season like 2024!”  And if you did hear such a remark today, then you probably also heard them quip – April Fool’s!!

Is February the New March?

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Remember when Les said he would come back at the season’s conclusion to tell you in 20/20 hindsight exactly what you may already suspect, he’s back to make some sense of the 2024 sugaring season!  Enjoy.

The Ohio maple syrup season ended on the first weekend in March.  This comes less than a week after President’s Day, the traditional starting date for the season in Ohio.  Of course, not this year as many Ohio producers started the 2024 season in January.  If you are a maple producer, you must wonder if the climatologist and everything we have been hearing about our climate is right.  Is February becoming the new March?  

Let’s analyze what we have seen and experienced in 2024.  OSU Climatologist Dr. Aaron Wilson has been telling us that the winters will get milder, and Spring will come earlier.  Once again, I refer to historical weather data to make a point using Weather Underground weather history maps.  Dating back to 2021, here is what I consider a relatively normal March (below).

Here is February of this year, 2024 (below).

It has been reported over the last several months that we ended 2023 with almost record-breaking high temperatures for November and December.  In fact, the climatological winter (December, January, and February) was the third warmest on record.  The 2nd warmest occurred in 1931.  The warm weather sent a warning to many maple producers, alerting them that something unusual was about to happen.  In Ohio, those that tapped in mid-January got it right.  Those tapping right after the first of the year were rewarded with 6 to 8 weeks of maple producing weather.  Many recorded over 14 boils before the first of March.  This year undoubtedly sets a new benchmark for early tapping.  Why did this happen and what can we learn from the experience.

The winter of 2023/24 followed the long-range forecast’s prediction.  With the exception of the invasion of a cold air mass in mid-January, the mild temperatures came back and continued throughout February.  This set up some extraordinarily good runs throughout the state.  However, a troubling and confounding factor was the overall lack of moisture.  I would say that many parts of Ohio were below average on moisture during this period.  Dryness in the woods is not good for maple production.  It is much preferred to have 4 to 8 inches of slowly melting snow, at the very least, lots of rainy days interspersed through the season.  I have seen woods that face north where the snowpack will last almost to the end of March.  These woods have produced good runs all the way to the end of March and even into April.  Not this year.

Here is the graph (above) showing the high, low, and average temperatures for the first two weeks in March.  The important thing to look at here is the minimum and maximum temperatures that clearly show we not only had daytime temperatures in the first two weeks March above 50 degrees F, but also had nighttime temperatures that approached and even hit 50 degrees.  This totally wiped out the freeze/thaw cycle, and we all know you cannot make syrup without a freeze/thaw cycle.  Sustained temperatures above freezing will undoubtedly be a recurring problem into the future.  Warm temperatures also accelerates the accumulation of Growing Degree Days, pushing the trees toward budding.  However, buddy sap did not end the season in much of Ohio.  It was the acceleration of microbial growth resulting from an abundance of unseasonably warm temperatures causing the sap to warm and foul systems.  It is almost impossible to make quality syrup under these conditions.  During the Ohio Maple Tour, I tasted multiple samples of syrup made in early March.  Just about all had that sharp taste of syrup made from sour sap.

Now comes the real challenge!  How do we prevent the possibility of this very marginal syrup from entering the market?  Especially in a year when many producers in states like Ohio had a poor year and now have syrup of questionable quality to sell.  Do you bottle the syrup and hope no one notices?  After all, it may have good color somewhere between Amber and Dark Robust.  The rationale in the past has been that most customers will not pick up on the off flavor; after all, they are used to high fructose corn syrup imitations.  The question now turns becomes, how much high-quality syrup will be made in the Northeast and in Canada this year?  Will the syrup they sell to the big box stores have better quality than what our customers can buy locally?  We already know it will most likely be less expensive.

In the end what have we learn? We added one more year to the string of abnormally warm maple seasons that we have experienced over the last 5 years.  For Ohio producers tapped in January, many experienced a near normal season.  Operations made some very good syrup that did not have quality issues.  Their markets are covered.  This also means that in 2025 when New Years Day rolls around, those producers who gambled right in 2024 will again be ready to tap trees at the first signal of good sugaring weather.  Unfortunately for many Ohio producers tapping later in the calendar, this year will be a hard lesson.  Those that tapped after mid-February found out that you cannot trust Mother Nature, because she does not read the Calendar.

Anyone Tapping Yet?

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When to tap?  That is the question.  And when it comes to maple sugaring, that is THE question.  Currently, we are in the holding position at our Mansfield sugarbush and thankful for the cold temperatures that have descended on the region.  The longer the woods stay cold, the closer our trees will get to meeting their chilling requirement, and the more optimistic I will be when we do eventually start our season.  Put simply, if trees don’t sleep well, they can wake up cranky!

When we look to the south along the Ohio River, I see more good signs of zero accumulated growing degree days since the start of the year.  Note, this does not account for any warm spells we had around Christmas.

With that map in mind, a peek at online chat forums like the Maple Trader’s Ohio Forum reveals that several folks are already tapped in part or in full (January 2nd in Ross County, another early report out of Muskingum County).  Looking even further south to states like Kentucky and West Virginia, only early tappers were rewarded with last year’s ultra-warm and sporadic 2023 season.  That likely pushed some producers to move their tapping date earlier on the calendar.  Still, others are crossing their fingers that last year was an anomaly and going with a more traditional schedule again for 2024.

Taking the forecast up top at face value and speaking directly to our Mansfield site, there aren’t many (if any) quality freeze-thaw cycle days for a truly big run in the next 2 weeks.  If we do decide to tap in a week or so, we should at least get all our lines flushed and spot check the vacuum on the system while we wait for better conditions to kick things fully in gear.

Come back next week for a post from Les Ober where he discusses the question of tap timing and the effects of El Nino as we all wring our hands and stare into muddy crystal balls in search of the right answer to our question!

Updates from the Sugarbush

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Based on the forecast, it’s hard to tell when our season will launch at the Ohio State Mansfield campus, but we’ve been hard at work readying the woods for whenever Go Time is.

3 years of single tree lateral lines came down from the ACER project that examined differences between sap production in Freeman’s (red x silver or “Rilvers”) maples.

Lateral lines in bad shape from wildlife damage or sanitation issues were replaced.  Some of these issues are pretty small and hard to spot unless you have your vacuum pump running.  Other wildlife damage…guessing raccoon or coyote here, pretty obvious.

Bucked rounds were hauled and split to feed our new demonstration evaporator at the also brand new maple pavilion (more on that later!).

We’re nearly done replacing all of last year’s spouts.

As we find drops and T’s that need replaced, we are shifting to a pin- or peg-style T so that we cut off the old spouts when taps are pulled at the end of season.

New trees that have grown into a minimum tapping size have been added to the system.  Surprisingly, our second main line that originally featured 99 trees when the tubing was installed in 2019 grew by 9 additional taps this year.  This was a good reminder to keep a diameter tape handy when getting your sugarbush ready for the season.  Sure, trees grow slowly, but they are growing and it’s sometimes surprising what just a few years can do when conditions are right.

End-line sensors are out gathering sunlight to keep our monitoring system operational, and we’re adding valves to the end of our main lines to facilitate a more complete and convenient sanitation regiment.

And our invasive species contract to control multiflora rose, particularly where it was worst along main lines 1 and 2, is already paying dividends with increased mobility and ease of access throughout the system.  A chest-rigged brush cutter was used to sever stem clusters in tandem with a timely and targeted application of glyphosate to the cut stem surfaces.  **This is a good reminder that any herbicide treatment in and around a working sugarbush should be done with caution!  Being cognizant of compound half lives, targeted treatment that stays where it belongs, and a well-trained applicator are keys to ensuring these sometimes necessary steps help and don’t hurt.**  Honestly, having the ability to freely negotiate through the woods wherever we please probably contributed to finding 9 additional taps along our second main line.  I also couldn’t help but notice that the majority of our lateral sanitation issues were cropped up around the second main line too.  Certainly trickle down penalties of thorny access because of a nasty invasive thicket infestation in the woods!

You literally could not walk through this area of the forest before, and the stem clumps that are left (and hopefully dead!) are the reason why.

One last major priority for this off-season will be attempting to remedy the long flat (at best!) stretches of main line between our pump house and where the majority of our taps start on main lines 4, 5, and 6.  I’m sure that will be a learning process complete with a couple of bumps in the road, but the goal is to perhaps install a couple lift options to show producers different ways of overcoming this common challenge in Ohio maple woods.  More on this last point later!!

Another Topsy Turvy 2023 Maple Season

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Our 2023 maple season was yet another sub-par year subjected to early and frequent warm spells.  2023 marks the 3rd consecutive year that our first run of the season ended not because temperatures took a prolonged dive below freezing but because temperatures spiked into the upper 50’s or low 60’s.  Three years in a row!  Crappie fishing weather to end the first run of the season!  Starting off a season with a warm temperature spike sets the table for sanitation issues, and those challenges were forefront to yet another Ohio maple season.  For all practical purposes, our production season at the Ohio State Maple woods was over by March 1st.

Early tappers were rewarded this year making the most out of a tough season.  A few producers up north are holding out for a final run or two before also switching to post-season tear down and cleaning duties.  How the entire state fares is yet to be determined, but the individual producers I have spoken with are not ecstatic over the year’s production totals.  The bottom line is that Ohio appears poised to enter, heck we might already be in, a new normal.  Though spring is temporarily stalled with the current slight cool down, spring invaded winter like a unexpected marauding army.  To get an idea of just how early 2023’s spring has been, check out the time-lapse map from the National Phenology Network.

Regardless of whether you are a producer up north with a few more days of boiling on your horizon or if the season is a memory at this point, be sure to check out Future Generations University’s webinar next Thursday evening.  On March 16th at 7 PM, the Out of the Woods semianr series will focus on post-season sanitation.  Mike Rechlin and Kate Fotos are going to share best practice guidelines on keeping your sugarhouse and your sugarbush spic and span headed into the off-season.  You can watch the webinar on Youtube or get your own registration link through Zoom here.

Tips for Working Volunteers into Your Maple Woods

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Whether you have children eager to help or new volunteers wanting to participate in your woods, you are undoubtedly familiar with the tug-of-war.  On one side, you want to get new hands engaged and interested.  On the other hand, if you want something to be done right the first time, do it yourself!  At the Ohio State Mansfield sugarbush, I am constantly balancing the need to get volunteers into the woods while still maintaining standards of quality and efficiency.  Here are a few tips that we use to make sure our volunteers are a help and not a hinderance.  Hopefully you can use one or more of these ideas to streamline your own efforts to reach this delicate balance.

Precision tappers are expensive, but precision tappers are also efficient and effective at controlling the single most important activity in your woods – tapping!  Precision tappers allow you to set the exact tapping depth and reliably expect that the grip points on the end of the device will result in a steady straight taphole each and every time.  While they are costly, our taphole consistently went through the roof when we employed these this sap season for the first time ever.  Precision tappers are probably not for the average producer, but if education and outreach is a central part of your mission, they may well be worth the cost.

An extra step for ensuring excellent tapping is to clearly mark your tapholes at season’s end with a dot of forestry paint.  If you are employing geometric tapping (e.g, over 3 inches-up 6 inches, over 3 inches-down 6 inches, …), then next year’s instructions simply become “find the [insert color of your choice] dot, space over, and tap.”

While we are on the subject of tapping, choose a sacrificial tree to train your tapping crew.  This double-trunked specimen is below our sap shed, has half its crown busted out, and has been tapped no fewer than 100 times in the past 5 years.  Our sacrificial tree is a classic “take one for the team” scenario.  Drilling a good taphole is only part of proper tapping.  How to properly set the spout is just as important, and in my experience, more apt for abuse and mistakes.  Repetition with back-and-forth feedback are minutes worth their weight in gold if volunteers or new help tap a significant portion of your woods.  Make your mistakes here – not on your production trees.

Lead by example in the sanitation department.  If your sap tank is filthy and scummed over, it’s hard to expect your help to take you seriously about sanitation in the rest of the woods.  If your tapping gear is mud-caked and filthy, it’s probably a bit hypocritical to expect your volunteer crew to keep your gear spotless and spit-shined.  Be diligent about sanitation, speak often about sanitation, and your help will take sanitation seriously as well.

Keep a volunteer’s job simple but always give them a roll of flagging tape to pinpoint potential issues they may run across.  If they see something suspect, have them tie up some flagging tape so you can check it out later.  Better yet, and particularly useful for keeping track of progress and directions in the woods, if you incorporate some numbering system into your main lines and laterals.  Below you’ll see an aluminum write-on tag that we tie on each lateral loop starting with main line number and ending with lateral line number.  So in this case, you’re looking at the 3rd lateral line on main line #1.  Navigation and giving directions becomes exponentially easier with this numbering system in place.

While we are talking about lateral loops, show your volunteers the rapid visual checks a producer has to ensure their woods are working properly.  As volunteers walk the woods, it’s easy to visually confirm that sap is traveling around the loops signaling a functioning system.  The same goes for sap flow through the drops into the laterals.  If the loops or drops are empty but the rest of the woods is running good, a strip of flagging tape might be warranted.

And lastly, do not realistically expect perfection.  I found this double spout tree untapped just last week.  It’s too bad we didn’t get this one tapped earlier, but if 1 big tree’s production is the price I pay to get someone excited about maple – that’s a price I suppose I’m willing to pay.

Getting Ready for Season

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These are exciting and anticipatory times in the sugarbush as last-minute items are checked off the list.  As that list gets shorter by the day, we are turning our attention increasingly to the weather forecast and the all-important decision of “When to tap?”

Smart sensors are installed and grabbing what precious little sunlight has shone this January.  Charge batteries, CHARGE!

Lateral lines are all patched and tight with new spouts on the end of each drop.  These little side pulls, constructed from old, chewed laterals, have been a big help to us in tightening up our system.  First a before photo, second an after photo, and third a zoomed in photo of the side pull rigged with double end line hooks.

Additionally, a small pocket-sized carpenter’s level is worth its weight in gold for ensuring you have continuous drop from spout through lateral to main line to the pumphouse.

After an exceptionally windy and raucous 2022, we revamped and strengthened our sap tank cover.

An old broken valve has been replaced by new hardware (valve with the white handle is the new replacement), and I even took a little hacksaw to knock the end of one handle off to get a bit more clearance.

The next big to-do list item is to get our research canisters sledded out into position.  A fresh 3-5 inches of snow will make that task bunches easier.

Hopefully you are whittling down your checklist, or if you are a producer from southern Ohio or neighboring southerly state, you may already be making some syrup!  Heck, even as far north as Vermont, early tappers are getting a sap run already.  Hopefully this early warm spell is not indicative of yet another roller coaster season, but regardless – Wishing You a GREAT Season!