Article Title: From Tap to Table Sugar Season in Vermont

Edition: April 2001
Category: Dining Out
Author: Jake Brown
Article:

Once again, it's sugaring season.

While it may have come late this year because of cool temperatures, it still came, like seasons always do. It's a time when the sun, high in the sky seems far ahead of the rest of the signs of the season -- there's still plenty of snow and tree leaves are weeks from budding. As the days pass, the sun warms southern hillsides, thinning the snowpack and forcing the snow to let go of the land. Around the base of the hardwoods hollows develop. Steam, this time of year, is billowing from sugarhouses in Vermont's hills.

This is the season of the maple.

Last year Vermont produced 55 percent of all syrup produced in New England, or 460,000 gallons, according to the New England Agricultural Statistics Service. And, Vermont leads all the syrup producing states, too, contributing the most -- 37 percent -- of all syrup manufactured in the United States. The average retail price for the syrup of all grades in Vermont in 1999 was $30.70 per gallon, according to the service.

Anecdotal reports from Vermont sugar makers last year revealed a season that was generally short, and warmer than is ideal for sap flow. A sugar maker from Orange county said this about the season: "This was a very intense season -- all the sap flowed in about three weeks time with few breaks. I got started way too late. Sap flowed alright but it never seemed to really run like I have seen it run before. Seems like the trees only let you have what they wanted to."

This year, at press time, sap was starting to flow in some areas, but there had not been the ideal fluctuations between night and day temperatures that send sap flowing up and down in maple trees and into sap buckets and sap lines.

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