A maple syrup producer says sugar bush production is changing because the spring is coming earlier

After cold nights and warm days in the spring the sap runs from maple trees.  There are thousands of harvesters across Wisconsin who tap maple trees to make syrup and sugar, but many are finding changing weather patterns are upsetting the rhythm of the season. Nick Vander Puy from the Superior Broadcast Network talks with a third generation producer Joe Polak (Pollock) at Maple Hollow Sugar Bush about this year’s harvest. click here for a live stream broadcast

Maple Syruping Season

 

After cold nights and warm days in the spring the sap runs from maple trees.  There are thousands of harvesters across Wisconsin who tap maple trees to make syrup and sugar, but many are finding changing weather patterns are upsetting the rhythm of the season. Nick Vander Puy from the Superior Broadcast Network talks with a third generation producer Joe Polak (Pollock) at Maple Hollow Sugar Bush about this year’s harvest.

 

Earlier this spring Joe Pollack put out almost three thousand taps in the family sugar bush near Gleason, Wisconsin.  The taps are linked with blue plastic tubing.

 The sap from the trees flows into a storage tank inside the evaporator house.

“We have a pump station a quarter mile away from here.  All the sap in the woods flows into that one pump station on gravity. But I do have a vacuum pump on it to help it.  And because of that vacuum pump that’s why we’re getting any sap on a day like today. So my 2900 taps are putting out about five gallons of sap every few minutes.”

 

Polak points out the welded stainless steal evaporator pan.   It’s sitting atop a cast iron firebox. Making a  gallon maple syrup requires boiling about forty gallons sap.

 

“This is my evaporator.  This is where we do our cooking of maple sap to maple syrup.”

 

The evaporator is fired with local hardwood.

 

“That’s what does our primary cooking. Our finishing is done over hear with oil finisher where we can control the heat a little bit better. Before the sap goes into the evaporator we run it through a machine for reverse osmosis.  We’re taking out two/thirds of the water  before we start cooking, again to be a little more efficient, to save some cost and time.”

 

Polak says it’s been an unusual  spring this year in the sugar bush. 

 

“It’s been a little bit strange this year because of the hot weather we’re experiencing.  The sap isn’t running very well.  It is running some, especially if you have a vacuum system on your trees.”

 

But the harvesters hanging old fashioned buckets to catch the drip-drip-drip are getting hardly anything.

 

“This year they’re making very, very little maple syrup.  The natural gravity flow systems are just producing, very, very little.  Most of those people in central Wisconsin are at 1/8 the crop now.”

 

This is happening across maple syrup country. According to professors at the University of Vermont, out in Vermont,  warm winters are upsetting the rhythms of maple syrup. Over the past forty years the seasons are starting earlier and getting shorter. Some say sugar maples may disappear from Vermont.  

 

But Polak doesn’t think sugar maple trees will disappear from Wisconsin.

 

“I think the weather pattern is changing the industry. Seasons are coming earlier every year. Whether that’s going to change the complexion of the industry drastically I doubt.  The people who are going to be hurt the most are the people on the southern fringes of the maple belt, by that I mean southern Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, those people are going to get hurt the most.  Those of us in the central part, ah, our seasons will change, I don’t think our trees are going to die.”

 

Another factor effecting maple syrup production many maple trees are getting cut down for the paper and lumber  industry.

 

“Fast money with maple right now.  There’s a high price for maple logs, so a lot of people are taking.  I’ve never been one to agree with that.  Because we can make some money from our trees every year. You cut the tree you only make money once in your lifetime.We prefer to make maple syrup.”

 

While syrup production at Maple Hollow is holding it’s own, Polak’s maple sugaring equipment and supply  business is growing exponentially.  Polak has three thousand names on his mail order list.  Lots and lots of people are getting into making maple sugar in their backyards.

 

I’m Nick Vander Puy for the Superior Broadcast Network. 

to read a story about maple sugar decline in northern Wisconsin click here

To contact Joe Polak:

Maple Hollow

Maple Sugaring Equipment & Supplies

W1887 Robison Drive

Merrill, Wisconsin 54452-9543

715 536 7251   maplehollowsyrup@verizon.net

 

 

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