The sap evaporator at The Sugar Shack in Barrington is polished to a shine. It’s been cleaned inside and out by owner Ken Gowen, and the iron stove doors beneath the boiling pans are open and ready for the first load of wood. Over 80 cords of split dry pine are stacked neatly a short distance from the sugaring house, ready to be used as fuel for the sap boiling process, which typically produces 450 to 650 gallons of syrup a year at the Sugar Shack. Around 3,400 tube taps have been put into maples on the several plots of land where Gowen rents his trees in Deerfield, Rochester, Epping, and Lee. He plans to put out about 600 more bucket taps if it stays cold and will start boiling as soon as the sap starts flowing.    

The problem is that tap holes only stay open for a period of four to six weeks and the sap has already started flowing, about a month and a half early according to Barrett Rock, professor of natural resources at the University of New Hampshire. Rock says that earlier and earlier sap flows are becoming typical. “We’re in uncharted territory this year,” he says, considering the unusually warm December and January, two of the warmest winter months on record. “We don’t know what’s going to happen. Spring may have started in early January.”    

Sugarers like Gowen, who decided not to start tapping and boiling during the early thaws in January and February, are relying on a cold period in March to change more starch into sap in the maple trees, then for warm weather after that so more sap runs before they start sugaring. But for this strange winter, which many scientists predict will be typical of those we see in the future, it’s anybody’s guess as to the best time for sugaring.

The $4 million a year New Hampshire sugaring industry is in danger of melting away as winter temperatures fluctuate erratically. In the last century the New England region’s average temperatures have risen 1 degree. But scientists from around the world, including Rock, believe that in the next 100 years New England’s average temperature could rise up to 10 degrees, according to two well-known climate models, the Hadley Centre model and the Canadian Regional Climate Model. Take Boston and add 6 degrees, as the Hadley model predicts, and you end up with the average temperature of Richmond, Va., says Rock. “Maples won’t survive here because the climate won’t support them,” says Rock, who adds that conifers would also disappear from the area and the skiing and leaf peeping industries will be non-existent as well.      

Gowen, who started sugaring on his father’s farm in Newmarket 47 years ago, says he hasn’t noticed the changes yet that Rock predicts, but believes they’re something to be concerned about. As for this season he thinks it’s right on schedule, and that a January thaw is typical.

“If it warms up it will be a big deal (for sugarers), but with cold nights and warm days we’ll be golden.” Gowen, who tapped his maple trees on Feb. 14, knows of several other sugarers who tapped in January and did well.

The prime sugaring industry has been steadily moving north for several decades now. This change can be seen in the switch from the United States to Canada as the premier worldwide syrup producer. From the 1940s to the 1970s, the United States produced 80 percent of the world’s syrup while Canada produced 20 percent, says Rock. But since the 1980s, those numbers have flipped. Some, like Rock, say this is due to an increase in temperatures in syrup producing states, as well as the advent of user-friendly tubing to carry sap from maple trees to a central collection container.  

Barbara Lassonde, publicist for the N.H. Maple Producers Association, says that New Hampshire does produce a lot less syrup than it did in the early 1900s, though they don’t have statistics to say how much less.

The majority of that decrease in production, says Lassonde, is due to the drop in large-scale production. As farms were divided into smaller pieces of land, many sugarbushes (a grouping of maple trees) were cut down for development.    

There are currently about 700 commercial maple producers and an equal number of backyard sugaring operations, says Lassonde. As far as a warming trend, it’s most noticeable on the southern border of the maple belt, in the West Virginia and Virginia area, where they’re seeing a shorter sugar season.
“As far as New Hampshire goes though, it will be quite a while before we see a change,” says Lassonde. “We’re more in the middle of the maple belt.”    

However, sap flow patterns for the New England region are also changing, says Rock. “From the 1950s to the 1970s the typical time for the first sap flow would be around Town Meeting Day (usually in the first week of March) and St. Patrick’s Day would be the peak of the season,” he says. “The typical time for tapping was around President’s Day.”

Gowen agrees. “Years ago we always tapped on Washington’s Birthday,” he says. “We keep moving it up and up.” Gowen also doesn’t think the fluctuation of temperatures, between cold nights and warm days, is as good as it once was, remembering that when he was a kid, winter nighttime temperatures below 0 degrees Fahrenheit weren’t uncommon.

Bascom’s Busy Trees in Nottingham put out taps in January. Owner Rodney Bascom has been sugaring on and off since 1951, when he was a child on Bascom’s Maple Farm in Alstead. Bascom’s Busy Trees puts out about 1,000 taps every year and typically produces around 250 gallons of syrup. Bascom stopped doing the manual labor of sugaring three years ago; his son and granddaughter now produce the syrup, which he sells out of his kitchen.

Early seasons like this year mean lower sugar content at the beginning of the season, says Bascom, as opposed to at the end. In a typical year, the sugar content is highest in the beginning of the season when the longer, cold days give the maple trees more time to change their starches into sap. Low sugar content requires more boiling to evaporate the excess water.   

“We need a good freeze now of two to three weeks,” says Bascom, “and the sugar content may go up. I consider this season a fluke.”   

Steven Anderson, owner of Anderson’s Mini Maples in Deerfield, decided to wait until February to put out his taps. Anderson, who started sugaring in 1975 with just 12 buckets and the kitchen stove for a boiler, now has 950 taps connected by tubing on two plots of land that he owns. He also has a wooden sugaring house with a 3-foot by 8-foot evaporator to boil the sap into syrup, a job that takes most of the day and involves collecting the sap in the afternoon and boiling it that night.

The best syrup is that which is boiled the same day it’s collected, because the sugar in the sap can spoil if left sitting for too long. Anderson, who produces close to 100 gallons of syrup each year, has recorded his start date for each season, since 1975, when he began boiling the sap. The dates range from the earliest, in 1984 and 1981 when he started boiling on Feb. 17, to the latest, in 1993 when he started boiling on March 20.

This year, he’s putting his bets on the end of the season versus the beginning.

“A lot of people started in January to get the first runs,” says Anderson. “But the tap holes will be closed in March when the majority of the runs start.”

For Rock, who grew-up sugaring in Derry, Vt., it just wouldn’t be a typical New England experience without the maple syrup industry. This year, he predicts that we’ll have some syrup, though production levels will be way down.

“I don’t know how far down though,” says Rock, who’s heard from several farmers who aren’t even going to bother sugaring this year. “It’s too wacky of a season to really know.”