Winter snowfall damage cuts maple production in southern New Brunswick

Above watch: Maple syrup producers in Southern New Brunswick may have had a tough season, but production overall is about average, thanks to the northern producers. Shelley Steeves reports.

STILESVILLE, N.B. – A rough winter has cost some southern New Brunswick maple producers a lot of money.

Record snowfall managed to bury and break many of the sap lines belonging to Stilesville maple producer Darrell Trites, cutting his production significantly.

“We only got about one third or one quarter…and that’s all we’re going to get,” he said.

“The lines are all down, they were buried under four and five feet of snow, and there just wasn’t manpower enough to dig them all out.”

Trites, however, said he has lost thousands of dollars and won’t see any profit this year.

David Briggs of Briggs Maples said producers throughout southern New Brunswick had their worst year ever recorded.

Briggs is responsible for putting together an annual crop report for the province. He said damage from snow load was extensive and the weather was just too cold for the sap to properly flow.

“The sap just didn’t seem to co-operate the days we were hoping for it to run,” he said. “It just didn’t happen.”

Briggs recently finished calculating the amount of syrup produced during this year’s maple season in New Brunswick, and said levels were only around 25 per cent of their usual amount.

However, production in northern New Brunswick, where 80 per cent of the province’s syrup is produced, fared better.

“The weather was much more co-operative because less snow fell and the temperatures were conducive to a pretty good sap flow,” he said.

“When it did run, it ran better, giving a better crop in the middle to the northern part.”

He said the province still produced about $12-million worth of maple syrup this season, which is about average.