While the cold, short winter didn’t lend itself well to helping push the sap out of tapped maple trees, the various sugarhouses of Maine saw a high turnout of customers and onlookers during last weekend’s Maine Maple Sunday.

Bill Symonds, who owns and operates Sweet William’s sugarhouse in Casco, said he didn’t start boiling his sap until Tuesday of last week.

“The syrup year has been bad, but the turnout’s been good,” he said.

“Mud and sap flow go pretty much hand-in-hand,” said Rich Morrill, who owns Nash Valley Farm on Nash Road in Windham.

“It’s been very steady,” he said of the crowds.

The isolated locations of many of the sugarhouses caused parking nightmares for customers. Both sides of narrow streets were lined with cars at most syrup hotspots, yet customers were willing to navigate the stop-and-go roadways to get at the fresh syrup.

“We have two boys here who love pancakes and we wanted to show them how (the syrup) is made,” said Sarah Bischoff of Cape Elizabeth, while sitting at a table at Cooper’s Maple Products on Chute Road in Windham. With her was her husband, David, and sons Charlie, 4, and Sam, 2.

Sugarhouses like Copper’s invited attendees to try free samples of maple syrup on scoops of vanilla ice cream and watch sap being boiled on special stoves. Sweet William’s also invited patrons to try their syrup on a hot scoop of baked beans from a crock pot.

Symonds said about 1,300 people showed up at Sweet William’s that day. He said he taps about 2,000 trees. Neighboring land owners allow him to tap maples on their property in exchange for a few handles of the finished product.

“I thought it was great,” said Kate Wurgler, 48, of Gray. She said it was her first time visiting a sugarhouse.

“I’m only going to buy Maine maple syrup from now on,” she said. “Aunt Jemima is out.”

MaplesyrupSunday01: Jeff Marcoux and Chris Powers, both of New Hampshire, flip pancakes at Cooper’s Maple Products on Chute Road in Windham.MaplesyrupSunday02: Charlie Bischoff, 4, of Cape Elizabeth take a bite of syrup-soaked pancake Sunday morning from Cooper Maple Products on Chute Road.MaplesyrupSunday03 & MaplesyrupSunday04: Bruce Christiansen, 57, at Nash Valley Farm in Windham uses a hydrometer to check if a selection of maple syrup is dense enough to bottle.MaplesyrupSunday03 & MaplesyrupSunday04: Bruce Christiansen, 57, at Nash Valley Farm in Windham uses a hydrometer to check if a selection of maple syrup is dense enough to bottle.MaplesyrupSunday05 Bill Symonds, owner of Sweet William’s sugar house in Casco, gestures to the machine he uses to boil sap into maple syrup. He said the device produces five or six gallons in an hour.MaplesyrupSunday06 Bill Symonds, owner of Sweet William’s sugar house in Casco, holds a syrup grading kit. Finished maple syrup varies in density, and producers use these kits by comparing their finished syrup to the color of the “syrup” in the bottles. The bottles actually contain colored oils.MaplesyrupSunday07 Bill Symonds, owner of Sweet William’s sugar house in Casco, shows the flexible tubes he uses to get sap from maple trees. Trees are drilled like in the old days, but instead of hanging a bucket from each spigot, a network of tubes from different trees run into a common tank. “Maintaining this tubing is a full-time job,” he said, saying falling branches and squirrels can wreck his sap lines.MaplesyrupSunday08 Stoves like this one, made from a metal drum, were used to boil maple sap into syrup in the past. Although the machines are more complex today, they way they work is pretty much the same.MaplesyrupSunday09 Jason Moen shows a tub of maple sap to a group of visitors at Sweet William’s sugar house in Casco. Tubes use gravity to run the sweet sap into the shack at the bottom of the hill.MaplesyrupSunday10 Catherine Zuckerman of New Gloucester and Terry Cosgrove of Casco bag a puff of special cotton candy at Sweet William’s sugar house in Casco. The confection is made with white sugar and maple sugar; sap with all the water boiled away.