Maple sugaring season?

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  • Collector98

    Active Member
    Jan 18, 2015
    271
    Hello everone. I'm not sure if this is the right place for this, but it seems like there's quite the wide variety of people on here and someone is bound to know the answer. I was recently gifted some maple tree taps and buckets from some friends in Canada. Although they are a great source of information for processing the sap and other related things, the main issue they cannot help me with is the correct season for actually tapping the trees as they have drastically different weather, such as 3 feet of snow just a few days ago. If there's anyone in the Baltimore area who would be able to provide some information regarding this issue, I would really appreciate it!

    Thanks!
     

    John from MD

    American Patriot
    MDS Supporter
    May 12, 2005
    22,734
    Socialist State of Maryland
    February and March is the time period for maple sugar gathering and processing. You can get more from the DNR website including the parks around Frederick and Thurmont that give demos.
     

    John from MD

    American Patriot
    MDS Supporter
    May 12, 2005
    22,734
    Socialist State of Maryland

    babalou

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Aug 12, 2013
    16,019
    Glenelg
    awesome

    John is correct with the time-frame. The key (best sap production) when I was growing up in Vermont was warm days and freezing nights, think 40’s / 20’s.

    My uncle and aunt now live in the family Summer home on Echo Lake in East Charleston, VT. It is just west of Island Pond and East of Newport. Way up NE VT. Been in family for almost 100 years. Grandparents passed away and my uncle bought my dad out since he lived in Lexington Park MA. He would go up to VT in the Winter to cross country ski. He retired from Mitre to live up there. So I still go up there a few times a year for vacation and the Fall to cut wood for him for the Winter. So like when I was a kid. We/he has 10 acres on the lake at the outlet and about 80 acres on the hill. I always get a few jugs of maple syrup from the trees on the hill. Still have a few. Yum!!!
     

    bob finger

    Member
    Jul 24, 2016
    66
    As was stated earlier sap runs up the tree from the roots when it gets above freezing during the day and below freezing at night. In the B-more area I'm not sure that happens very often so sap production will be small, assuming you can even find any sugar maples. Getting permission to tap someone else's trees is another matter entirely.

    I grew up in Northern Wisconsin and helped friends make syrup as a kid....back when you used buckets and tree taps and hauled it by hand to the sugar shack to boil it down. Lots of hard labor. Today with modern taps and plastic piping running all over the place gathering sap is much less labor intensive than in the "old days".

    You are aware it takes 50 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup? A single mature tree might give you 2 gallons of sap in a good year. bob
     

    jabber6

    Active Member
    Mar 16, 2013
    242
    Forest Hill, Harford County
    My uncle and aunt now live in the family Summer home on Echo Lake in East Charleston, VT. It is just west of Island Pond and East of Newport. Way up NE VT. Been in family for almost 100 years. Grandparents passed away and my uncle bought my dad out since he lived in Lexington Park MA. He would go up to VT in the Winter to cross country ski. He retired from Mitre to live up there. So I still go up there a few times a year for vacation and the Fall to cut wood for him for the Winter. So like when I was a kid. We/he has 10 acres on the lake at the outlet and about 80 acres on the hill. I always get a few jugs of maple syrup from the trees on the hill. Still have a few. Yum!!!

    That’s way up they-ahhh in the Northeast Kingdom! :D I grew up on a farm in Leicester, about 1/2 way up the state in the Champlain valley. My sister still lives in Essex Jct.

    I'm so partial to maple syrup, I bring my own syrup to breakfast restaurants that only serve corn syrup (uggh). Love wet walnuts and syrup on my ice cream too! :lol:

    Can’t blame you there, there’s no good substitute. I try to bring home a couple extra quarts every time we get up north.
     

    Collector98

    Active Member
    Jan 18, 2015
    271
    Thanks for all the replies everyone! Hopefully I can at least get a few oz of syrup this season! If not, I'll just have to keep going to Québec since it's so cheap there! I can get a 540ml (~18oz) can for about $5 usd. Much cheaper than anything around here!
     

    marko

    Banned
    BANNED!!!
    Jan 28, 2009
    7,048
    Luckeroth - where are you located?

    We gathered sap from maples in NJ and steamed the wallpaper off our kitchen walls one year.
     

    Collector98

    Active Member
    Jan 18, 2015
    271
    I'm located about 15 minutes from Baltimore. I know we don't have the ideal temps or even the ideal trees (sugar maples), but I'm excited to at least give it a shot :)
     

    Antarctica

    YEEEEEHAWWW!!!!
    MDS Supporter
    Sep 29, 2012
    1,728
    Southern Anne Arundel
    From what I have gleaned from surfing around for info on this, timing in MD will depend greatly on your location and the trees/property you have.

    There's a decent amount of sugaring done in western maryland, and the way it is done, given the climate and trees is very similar to how its done up north. For those of use toward the coast, it seems like the time to tap can be much earlier and run much longer. I've found little good info on this, but the best I've found is on the mapletrader.com forums. There are state by state forums, and those that pertain most to 'eastern' MD sugaring are obviously maryland and virginia. I've posted some questions there as well as others.

    Obviously sugar maples are best if you got'em, but other maples and sweet gums also produce (apparently). I've got a ton of sweet gums, so I was interested in trying, but I haven't yet.

    Beware starting to read up on this - it is addicting. The systems that people put in place get really cool. Full sugar houses with large evaporators, piping systems, vacuum systems to help suck it out of the tree, even reverse osmosis systems to get the water content down quickly.

    It seemed that on a small, 'for your use only' scale, that tapping and running tubing into gallon jugs or five gallon buckets would be the best approach. But even if you get 20 gallons of sap, evaporating that can be quite a task. It seems unfeasible, in even the smallest quantities, to try to evaporate it with anything other than a wood fired system. People try to do it with propane and a turkey fryer burner, but spend a fortune on propane. It looked to me like making a makeshift cinderblock (not even with mortar) evaporator with catering pans across the top would be the best way to boil it down.

    Good luck and let us know how it goes.
     

    rob257

    Active Member
    Jan 17, 2013
    238
    North Central Carroll Co.
    Pruning shears

    In MD late Feb daytime temps above freezing use pruning shears to trim 1/4 stems on limbs. Check the cut 24 hrs later. No sap your to early to tap the tree for syrup.
    If the stems are weeping, tap the tree for syrup. Don't get greedy per tree. It does need the sap to live. Thinkof it like a blood transfusion.

    Rob
     

    babalou

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Aug 12, 2013
    16,019
    Glenelg
    yeah

    That’s way up they-ahhh in the Northeast Kingdom! :D I grew up on a farm in Leicester, about 1/2 way up the state in the Champlain valley. My sister still lives in Essex Jct.



    Can’t blame you there, there’s no good substitute. I try to bring home a couple extra quarts every time we get up north.

    every station in French lolol. Have granola eater fam in s. Burlington. One of my relatives was a famous poet. John Engels- the patriarch of that part of the fam....Bunch of hemp sandal, pooka shell wearers. lol. They love up there due to the numerous cow patties to flip over for you know what hahahahaha love them though..
     

    Mr H

    Banana'd
    Took the grandkids up to Cunningham Falls several years ago, and it was really good.

    Demonstrations, entertainment, pancakes...

    Downs Park in Pasadena used to do a syrup processing demo, but I don't know if they still do.
     

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