Syruping season off to early start; impact still unclear

Syruping season this year could be one of exceptionally high yield, exceptionally low yield or relatively normal yield. It has at least a few Rice County maple syrup producers in “uncharted territory.”

This is due to the exceptionally warm weather that’s characterized 2024, conditions that usually come much later in the season. This has proved helpful to smaller syrup producers, like River Bend Nature Center, but caught some of the bigger producers off guard, like Jirik Family Farms in western Rice County.

”I think most of the people that are going right now are your backwoods guys or your backyard guys, the small tappers,” Jim Jirik said. “But anybody with a large-scale operation kind of got caught off guard. We usually get to these warmer temps in February. And so we’ve got our woods, it’s all ready to tap right now. But we haven’t tapped because we know that that’s gonna get cold for a couple of weeks. And if we were to pull some sap right now and, you know, we’d just barely get our lines on our machines full and then that would be done.”

Jirik said it’s too early to tell what this early start will do for the ultimate yield.

River Bend Nature Center volunteers Dave Lee and John Slettedahl, who spend their time making syrup for the nature center, aren’t sure either.

On Wednesday, Slettedahl and Lee were working at River Bend’s evaporator, where sap becomes syrup. But that’s not where their job starts.

Their day begins with collecting the sap from the many trees around River Bend, which one can identify by the large plastic bag hanging around chest level. At the top of the bags, a spile leads the sap from inside the tree into the bag.

Once the bags are emptied into buckets, the pair goes to a wood-powered evaporator and begins pouring buckets into a large bin at the top. Sap flows from the bin, into the hot metal.

There are five chambers in the evaporator, which the sap flows through as it cooks. By the last chamber, it should sit around 60% sugar density, said Slettedahl.

Their job has been easier this year, in comparison to the physical labor and other challenges associated with the high amount of snowfall last winter. But other challenges have arisen this season.

”This year, I would say the sap hasn’t run quite as well,” Slettedahl said. “So we’re working with a little bit less sap. But as far as the work going into it, it’s much easier. It’s been warm, you can walk, you’re not slipping and sliding on snow and ice and stuff. So I mean, the terrain, being no snow, has made it easier.”

Squirrels were another problem last year. They couldn’t find food as easily in the snow, so they were chewing through the hanging bags of sap.

River Bend Executive Director Brad Bourne said he couldn’t find anyone at the nature center who remembers ever starting the syruping season this early in the year.

”Nobody on our staff has personally ever tapped this early,” he said. “Anecdotally, I’ve been talking to people that say they don’t remember anything like it in decades. It’s been nuts.”

Since they only do it for education and winning state syrup competitions like in 2022, the warm weather’s impact on yield isn’t as important to them.

”We’re in completely uncharted territory,” Slettedahl said. “… Dave goes on the blogs and stuff for syrupers, and none of them really know what’s going to happen this year either. This will be a good gauge to see, if it ever happens again.”

River Bend Associate Director of Environmental Stewardship Brittany Smith said she thinks it could even be a two-for-one season.

”A syrup season could actually be multipart,” she said. “So right now, we have kind of our syrup season started. But looking at the long range, the temperatures are supposed to drop and stay below freezing for a while. The trees will most likely stop (producing sap). And it’s gonna depend on how this warm weather affects them. It’s very possible when we get that other warm spike, we could get another run of sap, which would actually extend our season outside of a normal season.”

From Saturday night through Wednesday, it’s expected to stay below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the National Weather Service.

”It’s almost like a little bumper crop,” said Bourn.