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Welcoming Visitors in your Sugarhouse and Sugarbush 

Do you sell your maple products or give tours at your sugarhouse? Is your sugarbush open for hiking? Thinking about it, but not sure? Join us for a discussion about marketing, safety, liability, and other considerations. We’ll share information (and let you know how to get free signs) for Maple 100, Open Farm Week, and the new agritourism limited liability statute – and we’ll make time for a round robin about what would be most helpful for your sugaring operation. 

West Virginia Sugar Operation Review Preparedness Manual & Regulatory Guidelines

The first part of this book is a set of guidelines that follow the West Virginia Department of Agriculture’s Sugaring Operations Inspection Checklist. The checklist is what is on the clipboard of the state compliance officer should you ever get or need a WVDA review certificate. The second part of this book presents a Decision Tree and Regulatory Matrix that you can follow to help you comply with state and federal regulation that apply to your production and sale of maple syrup.

What Causes Buddy Syrup and What Can Be Done to Prevent it?

Buddy off-flavour is an annual, natural occurrence that has been well recognized since the dawn of commercial maple production in the late 19th century. As we began our investigation there were two basic ideas for the sudden appearance of buddy syrup. The first was that heating sap containing elevated levels of particular amino acids produced compounds (pyrazines) that contributed to buddy off flavour. A more recent idea has been that yeasts in the sap convert sulfur-containing amino acids into compounds that explain the off flavours.

Why sap may not always flow well in early season

Maple producers know that when the temperature starts to rise in the spring, sap flows can’t be far behind. But when the weather starts to warm early in the spring and temperatures seem favorable for good sap flows, they are sometimes left wondering why the sap hasn’t started to run. There are several explanations for the disconnect between warm air temperature and a lack of flow during
the early season.

Wound Response to Taphole Rejuvenation Practices

In response to injury from wounds such as tapholes, trees initiate processes to compartmentalize the affected area in order to prevent the spread of infection by disease- and decay-causing microorganisms beyond the wound, and to preserve the remaining sap conducting system (Shigo 1984). This results in the formation of a column of visibly stained wood above and below the wound, and the affected zone is rendered permanently nonconductive to water and nonproductive for sap collection. These processes, along with effects from microbial activity, are responsible for the gradual reduction in sap flow from tapholes over the course of the production season. There has been recent renewed interest in strategies which attempt to extend the standard sapflow season or increase overall yields through the “rejuvenation” of tapholes. As part of a multi-year experiment to investigate the yields and net economic outcomes of several taphole longevity strategies, we conducted an experiment to investigate the volume of NCW generated in response to two of these strategies.