Cold stalls maple syrup season

ZANESVILLE – Lines of tubing crisscross the trees on Tim Cotterman's maple sugar bush, waiting for the trunks to give up their sap to be made into maple syrup. But none comes; it's simply too cold.

Sap generally starts to flow between mid-February and March, Cotterman said, when daytime temperatures are above freezing but the night remains frigid. But with temperatures remaining consistently below freezing the whole month of February and his tapped trees only producing a little water, Cotterman says this may turn out to be the worst maple syrup season he's seen in 20 years.

"It's never been this cold this long," he said. "Even last year we were already boiling syrup by now."

On average, Cotterman's 200 to 300 tapped trees can produce 50 to 60 gallons of syrup during a season of four to six weeks. Each gallon is made after boiling around 40 gallons of sap on his evaporator for upwards of 12 hours.

With the continuing cold weather, however, Cotterman said it might be somewhere closer to 40 gallons during a season of two or three weeks.

The sap production could be improved if the ground thaws before all of the snow melts and becomes run-off, he said, as the absorption will give the trees more moisture to work with, but it won't get them all the way.

"It's like anything in agriculture. It's all dependent on the weather," Cotterman said. "It either is or it isn't. There doesn't seem to be a happy in-between anymore."

Later, more intense seasons require Cotterman to take more time away from his store and his livestock, but he says he's luckier than most. Syruping is just a hobby for him, and instead of missing out on $50 a gallon, his friends and family will simply have less sticky goodness to put on their waffles.

Cotterman is simply content to continue the multigenerational tradition of harvesting maple syrup, as his grandfather and his father did, albeit with a bit less modern technology.

With fewer locals harvesting sap because of the decreasing number of farms and syruping's time-consuming nature, Cotterman he's proud to continue what he sees as a lost art.

"It's like farming. It's just in your blood," he said. "If you grow up doing it, it just becomes a thing you do in the spring."

arumer@zanesvilletimesrecorder.com

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Twitter: @AnnaRumerZTR