BARK RIVER, Mich. (WZMQ) – The unseasonably warm winter has made business harder across many industries, including maple syrup production.
“Coming off a very mild winter, a lot of maple farmers tapped early,” said Jeff Olson, co-owner of Olson Bros. Sugarbush. “We held off until February 23rd.”
On average, the Olson Bros. Sugarbush produces approximately 3,500 gallons of syrup each year. Due to the less-than-favorable conditions, that number currently sits around 2,600.
“The weather is what drives our yield,” Olson explained. “The freezing and thawing of the tree, the ground is what causes sap to run, so when you start having the budding process start early and when you start having those sap runs early, it’s definitely going to affect it.”
It takes a lot of work to get the sap from the tree to the table. Traditional tapping involves finding a healthy spot in each tree, drilling a 1.5″ hole, hammering the tap in, and waiting for the sap to drip into the bucket. From there, the sap goes to the evaporator.
“The preheater preheats the sap and obviously we get water as a byproduct out of that,” Olson said. “The sap works its way through our food pans, getting closer and closer to being syrup.”
Rather than tapping, the Olson brothers have largely converted to tubing over the years. Olson says tubing is healthier for the trees and allows him to get the most sap for his buck, even during a season like this.
“[Tubing is] going to use ground slope and it’s going to use vacuum to assist you in getting the sap from the tree,” he said. “As it sucks the sap, it’s sucking the bacteria out of the tree. If you want to think of a tap hole as a wound in the tree, what causes that to heal is bacteria. That’s why you get typically double the yield, having a sealed system, that you would get out of a pail.”
Because the Olson Bros. Sugardbush waited to tap this season’s sap, Olson is optimistic about the next few weeks of maple syrup production.
“We’re going to run until Mother Nature tells us that we can’t,” he said. “When you have this type of investment—literally, we have several hundred thousand dollars tied up in tubing—I want to harvest as much sap as I can out of it. I do think that when things start to come around, it’s going to make up for lost time. We’re still making good, table-grade syrup at this point.”
For more information about the Olson Bros. Sugarbush, call (906) 553-3636 or email olsonmaplesyrup@hotmail.com.
