BRATTLEBORO — Buckets and sap lines hanging from sugar maples mark Vermont's sweetest season: sugaring season.
Most Vermont sugarmakers are “fully tapped out” and have tapped all their trees, even in northern Vermont, said seventh-generation maple farmer Arnold Coombs, general manager of Coombs Family Farms and Bascom Farms.
Coombs recently spoke to a sugarmaker near the Canadian border in Franklin County with 55,000 taps. Bascom Family Farms, of which Coombs Family Farms is a subsidiary, has 75,000 taps in Alstead, N.H. The farm has boiled about 1,000 gallons so far.
A few Windham County sugarmakers have started boiling their sap, said Coombs.
Sugarmakers Karen and Marty Sprague, of Sprague & Son Sugarhouse in Jacksonville, started tapping on March 2. Marty was in the woods tapping and working on the sap lines most of the week, said Karen in an email.
“Not quite sure when the first boil will be,” she wrote.
Wendy Dutton, who helps run her family's three farm stands and bakeries, has also been making maple syrup for 18 years.
Dutton taps from 3,600 to 4,000 sugar maples per year, trees that are scattered everywhere between Brookline, where the Duttons live and farm, and Manchester, where one of the family's three farm stands sells produce and the syrup, among lots of other things.
Calling it a family operation, Dutton said she gets help with the tapping from her three sons, her daughter, and her husband Paul.
She said that the syrup sells out every year and when it does she buys from other producers to sell at the farm stands.
Like most commercial producers, Dutton's family syrup is made not just from boiling but also by a reverse osmosis procedure that pumps the sap through a membrane, effectively separating water from sugar and other impurities. In reverse osmosis maple syrup production, what is kept is not the purified water but the sugary sap, which then requires much less boiling to convert to syrup.
Dutton says she's been using the system for about 15 years, noting the savings in fuel and time.
Reverse osmosis machines, costing anywhere from a few hundred dollars to several thousand, are now ubiquitous at gatherings of maple syrup processors and are readily available at any outlet that sells syrup-making accessories, as well as online.
Backyard sugarmaker Charlie Marchant, a retired teacher, volunteer firefighter, and local history enthusiast, does it the old fashioned way in his 10-year-old self-built sugarhouse.
Marchant said, depending on the weather, and how much help he has, he maintains anywhere from 300 to 800 taps and produces between 35 and 80 gallons of syrup.
Lots of optimism
The season has yet to launch into full swing. Coombs anticipates sugaring will pick up this week, weather permitting.
Coombs feels optimistic about the season. The weather has cooperated by providing a heavy snow cover and, although warming, temperatures have stayed low enough that the sugar maple trees have not bloomed.
“As we remember it,” said Coombs.
Once the trees start to bud, the chemical composition of the sap changes, which, in turn, changes the flavor of the maple syrup. The resulting tainted flavor - described by a Cornell University extension program writer as “chocolaty, almost a Tootsie Roll-type flavor” - lowers the syrup quality, said Coombs.
“Every farmer is optimistic, or you wouldn't be farming,” Coombs joked before adding that the maples haven't experienced overt environmental stress which could have harmed the crop in the months prior.
Last year, a warm spell in the middle of most farmers' season shortened the sap run, he said.
Coombs describes Vermont's 2012 sugar season as poor and short, about three to four weeks. A good season can last as long as six weeks.
“In a good year, we make about 1,200 gallons,” Dutton said. “Last year we made 800.”
Coombs said multiple variables, such as the moisture content of the soil from which the trees draw nutrients during the summer months, can affect the quality and taste of syrup.
According to Coombs, the maple syrup in 2007 had a “woody” flavor industry-wide, which lowered the quality.
“We don't really know why,” said Coombs.
Many longtime sugarmakers have witnessed the sugaring season change as the overall climate has warmed, said Coombs.
About 30 years ago, Town Meeting Day marked the traditional start of the season. Now, said Coombs, with warmer temperatures and milder winters, farmers must have their trees tapped by theend of February if they want to be ready when the sap runs.
Bascom Family Farms taps in January no matter what, he said, because it can take two to three weeks to tap the trees and string the sap lines.
“If you miss that, you miss a good chunk of the the crop,” Coombs said. “So you've got to be ready.”
Sugaring has proven profitable for farmers. The industry has expanded as a result over the past five years.
Sugaring provides “a better return than cows,” said Coombs. It also offers better working hours.
When Coombs was a kid in the 1960s, his father, Robert Jr., was reputed to have the largest sugar farm in the world, with 26,000 taps.
“That's nothing now,” said Coombs, adding that many new sugarmakers begin their careers with 25,000 taps.
Some of the sugarmakers in Québec that Coombs works with have more than 200,000 taps.
Making the grades
Vermont has moved forward on joining other states and Canada in creating industry-wide maple grades. The new grades would mean goodbye to Grade A Fancy and hello to Grade-A-with-a-color-and-flavor-description.
The grading and labeling of Vermont syrup according to standards that the U. S. Department of Agriculture is expected to adopt early this year has caused a certain amount of friction among producers.
Vermont sugarmakers have claimed that syrup from the state has distinct qualities and has to be judged with that in mind. The current state standards also require that syrup be slightly denser than other syrups made according to other standards, a quality standard that sugarmakers resisted moving away from. That will stay.
But if Vermont decides against using the new grading system, sugarmakers will not legally be permitted to sell Vermont syrup outside state lines, Coombs said.
Right now, Vermont sugarmakers can't sell Grade B syrup in New York, because that state doesn't recognize that Vermont-specific designation.
According to Coombs, last month the Senate approved a resolution to allow Secretary of Agriculture Chuck Ross to enact the new grading system. The resolution has gone to the House for a vote.
The allure of sugaring
The tableau of good cheer that greets visitors to Marchant's sugar house in mid- to late March might explain the attraction of small-bore sugaring.
Marchant and one or two friends might be sitting around having coffee or lunch while making sure that evaporator temperatures are correct and that the wood fire is burning vigorously. Sometimes there's discussion when stoking or stirring is needed or sap temperature needs checking.
Marchant, always practical, says he makes syrup because he likes to and because it's good exercise to be out in the woods in the dead of winter.
And, besides, “It makes good Christmas presents,” Marchant said.