The organic sugarbush
In attempting to establish criteria for organic certification of maple operations, there are still some wide disagreements among certifying agencies over how to regulate behavior that is unique to maple.
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The Season is Over: Now, How Will You Sell Your Syrup?
No two sugarmakers follow the exact same path. For some, their business grows slowly, one weekend farmers market at a time, and they prefer to stay small. Others build their backyard operations into wholesale businesses that keep them busy year-round. Some enjoy selling directly to their customers. And others would rather focus on production, and let established retailers take care of the rest. These snapshots of four sugaring enterprises illustrate just a few of those successful models.
The Shifting Sweet Spot of Maple Syrup Production: Climate Change Impacts on Sugar Maple Sap
How may climate change impact the maple syrup industry? Our team of interdisciplinary researchers, ACERnet (Acer Climate and Socio-Ecological Research Network), has been working to understand the complex answers to this question for the past several years. In particular, we are interested in examining how climate impacts the timing of the maple tapping season as well as both the quality and quantity of sap collected during the tapping season.
The state of the maple industry – 2011
A summary of the current state of maple production in New England is based on surveys returned from approximately 220 sugarmakers in April, 2011.
The Timing of Tapping for Maple Syrup Collection
There are a variety of reasons why sugarmakers might want to tap earlier than the traditional date: thousands of taps that take several weeks to install, lower snow cover and easier walking before mid to late winter, climate change generally moving the season forward and providing more sap flow weather in January and February. For most sugarmakers, the bottom line is simply this: what tapping time frame results in the highest sap yield? The experiments described below, which were performed between 2000 and 2007, were designed to answer this question.
The Untapped Potential of America’s Sugar Bushes
Low utilization of available resources limits the U.S.’s maple syrup production.
The Woody Plant Seed Manual
Planting for commercial forest production is the traditional mainstay of tree planting, but planting for wildlife food, watershed protection, urban environmental improvement, ornamental enhancement, wetland mitigation, and carbon sequestration are all on the increase. Ecosystem management, now commonly used in the management of many federal and other governmental forest lands, has decreased the use of planting to regenerate the forests and has increased the role of natural regeneration. Those who apply these practices will find this book useful also in the data on flowering and seed production.
The Work of Maple Associations
A panel discussion at the NAMSC annual meeting offered a number of suggestions for ways state and provincial associations can help their members.
Things You Can Do to Ensure the Quality of Your Maple Syrup
After producing maple syrup for over 40 years and teaching seminars on maple syrup production for close to 20, I have made or personally witnessed most of the common mistakes that lead to off flavors and poor syrup quality. In this article I will go over some, but certainly not all, of the factors that lead to poor syrup quality. The good news is that most of the factors can be controlled by producers with best practices, in turn meaning you control the quality of your syrup. The Map of Maple Off Flavors (linked above) identifies 5 primary areas where off flavors occur: Mother Nature, defoamer, processing, chemicals and others. I want to address each area in order of how they would occur from start of season to finish.
Thinning Your Sugarbush for Sap & Tree Health
Thinning is a specific woodlot management practice to concentrate growth on the most desirable trees. Peter Smallidge, Senior Extension Associate with Cornell University’s Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, reviews the benefits of thinning, how to know if you should thin your sugarbush, potential problems from thinning, and reviews research about how thinning in sugarbushes affects health, tapping options, and production.