Silver buckets can already be seen on many maple trees throughout the county now, collecting the drip, drip of sap that will become delicious maple syrup. The syruping season has come early this year, due to the unusually warm winter, and the trees have been tapped about a month earlier than normal.

With the light snowfall and spring-like temperatures we’ve experienced through much of this season, everyone seems to be wondering: Will we have syrup?

According to a recent Associated Press story, some syrup producers say the warmth will cause trees to bud too early, which gives the sap a bad flavor for syrup production, but others feel that they’ve tapped their trees early enough to coincide with the strange weather pattern this year and get enough sap before the buds come.

Experts at the University of Vermont’s Proctor Maple Research Center told the AP that it’s the weather during maple sugaring season that matters most, not necessarily the rest of the preceding winter. It’s the freezing at night and thawing during the day that makes the sap flow, experts say, so if we can get that during the next month or so, our syrup supply should be assured.

And let’s not forget the snowstorm of a week ago today, which goes to show that winter “ain’t over ’til it’s over.” Having more normal temperatures now that tapping has begun will probably help the effort.

Hopefully, the optimists will be right this time around and the syrup haul will be good enough for producers to make a profit. Maple syrup is part of our agricultural heritage here in Maine, an old-fashioned process of boiling down the sap to just the right stages for that sweet, amber delicacy. Nothing can imitate real maple syrup, though those corn syrup-based sickly sweet “aunties” and “cabins” may try. It’s a specialty of this region, and Maine is third in syrup production, just behind Vermont and New York.

Maine Maple Sunday, the last Sunday in March, is a big draw for agritourism at local farms and an important source of income for farmers. We’re sure they’ll still be able to draw crowds even if they have to use last year’s sweets and keep the actual boiling to a minimum, but it will be important for the public to know that the season is still on. It takes 40 gallons of sap to boil down to one gallon of syrup, so the haul may be lesser this year, but agriculture is and always has been an uncertain business, dependent on the weather, the winds, and even the bees in some cases.

So long as people still show up to the maple events and purchase syrup, boilers will be able to turn a profit and continue their production, so we don’t have too many of them abandon this time-honored tradition of creating a Maine staple. A listing of local boilers taking part in Maine Maple Sunday weekend can be found at getrealmaine.com.

Ӣ Ӣ Ӣ

Today’s editorial was written by Managing Editor Kristen Schulze Muszynski on behalf of the Journal Tribune Editorial Board. Questions? Comments? Contact Kristen by calling 282-1535, Ext. 322, or via email at kristenm@journaltribune.com.