GRAND RAPIDS — Patrick Mathias, owner of Minnesota Made: Mathias Maple Syrup in Grand Rapids, has been tapping maple trees for over 25 years. But the variation in who is doing what with their sugar bush is new to him this season.
“I’ve never seen this kind of conversation,” Mathias said. “It’s the ‘Tap now and get what you can,’ folks and then the ‘Hey, just be patient and wait for the right time,’ folks, and I don’t know which has more people on their side, 'cause people are doing both.”
Mathias' business partner tapped a line of trees recently, and the sap ran for just a day. The typical maple season lasts four to six weeks.
Mathias knows some producers in southern Minnesota and the metro area have started tapping, but he said the big producers up north are waiting because they expect another cold snap. Once a tree is tapped, you can’t tap it again that season.
Jonathan Wolf, lead forecaster at the National Weather Service’s Duluth office, said Friday, Feb. 9, that temperatures should return to normal in the next 8 to 14 days. But by March, temps will likely be above average once again.
Wolf also makes maple syrup, and while he couldn’t offer an opinion on the weather’s impact in an official capacity, he said personally he wasn’t even sure if he would tap this spring.
“I’m still holding out hope for March, but I’m not super confident that I’ll actually get some sap this year,” he said.
Here’s a quick rundown of what causes the trees to produce sap and how producers know it’s time to tap.
It starts in the fall. When temperatures and leaves start to drop, maples pull in their nutrients and send them down to the roots for winter storage. Then the trees go dormant for the winter. When days get longer and warmer, the trees start to move those sugars up. But when it gets cold again at night, the maples move those sugars back down.
“And that’s the sap run,” said Eli Sagor, University of Minnesota Extension specialist based at the Cloquet Forestry Center. “If you can tap the tree at the right time, then you capture a lot of high sugar sap as it’s moving back and forth, up and down, from the roots into the soon-to-be growing parts of the tree.”
"It’s the ‘Tap now and get what you can,’ folks and then the ‘Hey, just be patient and wait for the right time,’ folks."Patrick Mathias
When temperatures get warm too early, it can cause the short runs Mathias mentioned. Snowpack also plays a factor, which is why Wolf was concerned about not having a maple run.
Jeffrey Harper, water resources manager for the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, started tapping trees in 1993. He’s noticed a trend between the amount of snow and sap.
“In the years when we have a lot, a lot of snow, we generally have a lot of sap, and it takes more to boil down,” he said. “And in low snow years, we have less sap, and it’s sweeter. Just one of those natural fluctuations that we take it as it is.”
Harper said those unsure about whether to tap should get out there and see what is happening in their woods.
“When you start to see those changes in your weather and in the woods out there, then go ahead and start tapping,” he said.