The maple syrup season in New Brunswick was off to an early start this year, according to local producers.
Nathan Scott co-owns Dumfries Maples in Dumfries N.B., a 30-minute drive from Fredericton. He and his team produce maple sap and turn it into syrup, maple butter and taffy.
Scott said the sap came early this year, a welcome change to a slow season last year.
“We’re still hopeful that it may just work out to be an average season or maybe a little better, we’ll wait and see,” he said.
He said they began producing syrup a week earlier than last year, and he’s not the only one.
“It is definitely an early season. A late season, we don’t get maple sap until the end of March or early April,” Paul Reynolds, Little Mactaquac Maples owner, said.
That means he can offer tours during March break, bringing in more revenue.
Season outlook unclear
However, he and Scott were clear that an early start does not necessarily mean a good season. For sap to run, producers need freezing nights and warm days, meaning the real results of the season won’t be evident until late April or May.
“We can’t make predictions until it’s over because really we have no control over the weather, and that’s really what does it for us,” Scott said.
Last year was a bad season for maple products in New Brunswick, and Scott said Dumfries Maples’ production was down by about 30 per cent.
Maple production runs in his family — he said his late grandmother, who lived to 103, always remembered her father saying one in four sap seasons is bad. But those seasons can add up.
“You don’t like to have too many of those in a row because you have to make product,” he said.
As global warming continues to impact agriculture around the world, he said producers may have to prepare for an earlier season.
“I think we are going to see the effects of that over the next few decades. I think the maple industry will be one part that we’ll start to see that early.”
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