Photo: Chaiel Schaffel/WBZ NewsRadio
NATICK, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — With the arrival of maple tapping season, sugar shacks around Massachusetts are collecting sap for maple syrup.
For anyone in the maple business, the next six weeks are a fever of activity. Trees are tapped using drills, and a special spile is hammered (or tapped) into the tree trunk. After that, it's a race to make sure the farms can keep up with the hundreds and thousands of gallons of sap collected, as it can overflow the collecting buckets or spoil.
Casey Townsend, Executive Director at Natick Community Organic Farm, said that rather precise weather is needed for the sap to flow.
“We look at the weather window for the next couple of weeks, and we kind of see when it’s going to be above 32 [degrees] and mostly sunny,” said Townsend. He explained that a daily high temperature above freezing, but a night temperature below, is crucial. “It’s the temperature difference that causes the sap to move from the roots, all the way up into the trees to get the tree ready for leaf production for the year," he said.
Townsend said the Natick farm is still running its maple operations the old-fashioned way, with over 600 taps and buckets attached to trees on public and private land around the farm. Bigger commercial maple enterprises have gigantic systems of blue tubing that stay up throughout the year and bring all the sap to a central location. Since the farm doesn't own the land they're tapping on, they have to work with buckets and taps, which is a huge amount of labour.
“On any given day, when [the taps] are running, we are also running in the sense that we’re running from one site to another, to make sure that these buckets aren’t overflowing,” said Townsend.
Townsend said maple season is a kind of signal of spring, the beginning of much more work to come.
“Right now is kind of the trifecta for us, of animals birthing, seedlings getting started, and at the same time sap running,” said Townsend. “The warming brings us enthusiasm for the next year, essentially for all the stuff we’ve been planning for."
WBZ NewsRadio’s Chaiel Schaffel (@CSchaffelWBZ) reports.