Vermont Maple Syrup Production In December? Whacky Climate Change Partly The Cause

A tanker truck loading up sap at a maple sugaring 
operation in St. Albans, Vermont in March, 2020. That's
usually the season for sugaring in Vermont, but recent
December warmth has prompted some sugarers
to produce off season. 

Now that it's gotten a little colder, I guess maple sugaring season is done.

Wait, what?  

As any good Vermonter knows, sugaring season comes in March and April. That's when we start crawling out of the depths of winter. 

We start getting those chilly nights and mild days, which makes the sap flow in the maples and we start boiling away to make syrup. 

But, mainly due to a  better understanding of maple trees and a little bit due to climate change making our winters gonzo, some maple producers got some production in this December.  

As NBC5 reported, the warm spell that helped produce Vermont's destructive floods on December 18 and 19 had a tiny silver lining. 

Branon Family Maple Orchard in Fairfield made about 300 gallons of syrup during that episode. Temperatures briefly cooled down and they had to stop. But we had another warm week in the closing days of December, so Branon probably made more.

Other sugar makers in Vermont have reported making syrup, too.

Large maple producers like Branons tap trees early, since they have such an expanse of maple forests to cover. If sugaring weather is unseasonably favorable, like it was in the past couple of weeks, they can produce. 

Don't worry about the trees. It's not like sugar maples have a limited amount of sap and that's it. As long as it's warm, the maples will draw moisture from the ground to produce sap.  And the amount of sap taken from trees through maple sugaring is negligible, as far as the tree is concerned. 

At least we don't think so. Advances in technology and methods have greatly increase yields from Vermont maple trees.  That's one of the many things the University of Vermont  Proctor Maple Research Center is planning to look into as it launches a detailed maple industry and forest sustainability study.   

The same thing happened last year. After a brief, relatively harsh cold wave around Christmas, 2022, near record warmth hit Vermont in the closing days of December and the beginning of January, 2023.

Vermont is the largest maple producer in the United States, making about half the total for the whole nation. The biggest maple syrup producer in the world is Quebec. 

The UVM Proctor Maple Research Center is wo