The Maple Letters, 2025

I thought it would be fun to post my letters to my neighbors, many of who's trees I tap in our residential neighborhood consisting of properties ranging from about a fifth of an acre up to half an acre. Quite a few nice big sugar maples, and not a few norways also. Some reds. Nearly all new plantings are a silver/red hybrid, none of which are big enough yet.

Today's letter:
Hi neighbors! We are Pleasant Street Sugarworks and we're gearing up for another season of maple syrup making and email writing!
If you haven't met us, we're these crazy people.

We thought it would be fun to include the neighborhood list this time, because why should our tree owners be the only ones tortured with these updates?
Plus we'd love to see the neighborhood email list get back to its glory days!

It is hard to believe, but the sugaring season, with its reminders of resurrection and spring, is nearly here and it is now time to prepare!
It is so much fun to deliver this news after a big, cold, windy storm!
We'll tap March 1st at the earliest and March 10th at the latest, depending on the forecast and rearcast when that time comes.

<brevity>
To our beloved maple tree owners from last year, I kick off this season with a haiku to force succinctness:
The sap will soon flow.
Let me know if you are in
For tapping this year.
</brevity>
(Also J and C, would you be up for the propane tank loan again?)
(Carbon neutral boiling is in the works but we think this will be more of a 2026 thing!)

Also, we are considering a slight expansion this year, so R and M, J on A, and R on W, we've talked about that before; let me know if you'd like us to tap! You get a little bit of syrup as "rent" (officially 4oz per tap, but potential for more in a good season. Usually an 8oz minimum anymore). Anyone else too, but we'll have to see how our numbers and capacity shake out. Any kind of maple tree works.

What is our professional prediction for this sugaring season, you ask?
When we start the season, it will still be winter.
When we're done, it will be spring.
If we didn't make maple syrup, would spring still come?
This we don't know. We won't risk it.

A word about tree sustainability, since this is now our 5th year, and our 4th year with some of your maple trees: The longer we've done this and the more folks we've talked to and the more articles we've read, the more we're convinced that if the tapping guidelines are followed, it is safe to tap indefinitely, and we tap more conservatively than the most conservative guidelines I know of and treat your trees like true treehuggers would. Nevertheless, your tree health must ultimately be up to you. And that brings us to the fine print:

You cannot hold us liable for your tree health.
We cannot hold you liable for our safety in your yard.
Neighborliness is the only insurance available for this sort of thing!

Happy sugar season!
Andy, for the team
Pleasant Street Sugarworks
Vaporizing time and money since 2021

Hi all Pleasant Street Sugarworks participants from years prior!
This has been a lovely traditional Vermont winter, perhaps a good omen (did you know omens can be good?) to a lovely traditional maple season.
By April, we'll know for sure!

So far we've heard from:
P and J
S and J
S and C
J and D
J and L

and not yet from:
C and H
N and B
L
M and R
D and R

No pressure for a "yes"! Well, not TOO much pressure. :-D
My best guess at a tapping date right now is March 4, but we'll see as we get closer to March 1!
We've learned better than to tap in February.
Till we learn otherwise.
The more we learn the more we realize we don't know.

Happy almost spring!
Andy

Hi neighbors!

Maple season is absolutely here now! All of our tree owners we've ever worked with are back in for this season, plus 3 more. This will bring us to 33 or 34 taps on 21 trees if I'm counting right, versus our previous record of 30. This is roughly one quarter of the neighborhood's potential taps and about 4 times the limits of sanity, so I think we're right in the sweet spot.

We'll tap from Wednesday through Friday as weather allows. Discovering whether we enjoy tapping in the rain could be a factor on overall timing. It could end up being mainly Friday. [Would do it all Tuesday if life allowed]

We could use at least one more BBQ propane tank if anyone could loan us one for the sugaring season. We'll return it to you in early April at least as heavy as we got it. You get syrup for that too!

When J brought over his propane tank, naturally we struck up a conversation and he asked how I got into sugaring. Put succinctly, I worked as a sap gatherer for a large next-door bucket operation when I was around 10 years old or so and got pretty into it but then took a ~3-decade break. In 2020 I became aware of my ownership of a sugar maple tree and in 2021 just had to tap it. It was during this conversation that I suddenly realized that the maple sugaring bug is one that can go into dormancy, but cannot be cured, and can strike at any moment. Watch out.

Here are a handful of the reply's we got from the last update:

Hello! Thanks for the NICE neighborhood post on maple syrup. I have 2 maple trees on my property that have volunteered to be tapped, if you are interested in expanding. Very cool idea and a ton of work! Good for you.

Count us in! Cool project, love that you're doing this, and happy to be a part of it!

Yes, we’re definitely in on this lovely tradition. Thank you, ahead of time, for all of your hard work making this happen.

Yes, by all means, tap on. I have a half-pint jar of yours that I’ll leave on your front porch unless instructed otherwise. Thanks. We love the syrup, and the homegrown aspect makes it special.

Yes, looking forward to Spring and the tapping of our tree. Thanks for all you do for the neighborhood.

Andy, you are welcome to tap our trees again. Here comes Spring.

“If Andy is emailing, can Spring be far behind?” So pleased you have not become sane and abandoned this crazy-but-wonderful endeavor. Of course use our trees again, and small print noted. When you are over this way, I have a few jars of yours. And don’t let brevity be a hobgoblin! I've heard someone told Shakespeare to get to the point. May you never.

That email was long, rambling, and non-sensical! --My loving, honest wife

Andy, for the team
Pleasant Street Sugarworks

Hi neighbors!
Today is definitely the day! Maybe! For sure! Possibly! We're going to aim to start tapping the sugar maples during the warmest part of today. I'm starting to think Sunday would be the absolute perfect day but today is when we have a time slot to get started, and you know what they say! The best time to do something is when you're able to do it! (Do they say that?)

One of our rules at Pleasant Street Sugarworks is there must be some kind of science aspect. One of the goals is more experimentation around the lesser-producing but high population of Norway maples. Our friend M on the other end of the street has gotten excellent production out of her norway maple out front and we've observed two things: She has always tapped later than us, and has always had more ventilation at the bucket than us. We're going to try both this year. So the norways might wait until Sunday or even later. (Our hypothesis is that Norway maples kick into healing-mode faster than sugar maples, and any backlog of sap in the tap and its resident bacteria kick this in even faster, and thus, we've been drying up). If it works, the sugar maples would probably produce more in future years with the same adjustment. They'll be getting some extra ventilation this year as well.

One thing we can say with certainty: We're going to get a lot of sap this year, or a little, or somewhere in between!

The number of taps we got done Friday: 0
Amount of prep work we got done Friday: 1000
The number of taps we will do this afternoon: As many as we can! Starting with the sugar maples and then go from there.
We don't expect much sap today, but this week has potential for a lot.

Sugarmakers with far more experience than us are freaking out about the late start. Last year they freaked out about the early start. Here at Pleasant Street Sugarworks we try to be more steady than that. Drill first, then freak out about not having our evaporator set up yet.

Two bits of old timers lore I picked up this week: 1. You will,have a big run for every cold snap you had in the previous winter. 2. Weather reports are only good out four days, after that they become less reliable.

From personal experience: I’ve always found my self making syrup on Easter Sunday, over many years. Easter is late this year, so we will see if it holds true. Exceptions abound of course. But I think syrup making is more on the lunar calendar than the solar one.

Those are fun anecdotes! I hope (1) is true and I know (2) is true for sure!
(2) is why I now refuse to chase the weather to choose tapping day... except maybe to push it out (though maybe I would chase the weather more if I had vacuum).
I'm a church organist, and have also been in the business of tuning/repairing pipe organs and I can tell you whoever decided to put Holy Week in the early spring was definitely not a maple sugar maker!
I've never heard of the idea of the lunar calendar but it could potentially explain a few things, I'm going to watch for that now that the idea is planted in my head!

Alright, now we're getting somewhere!
10 sugar maple taps installed Sunday afternoon. No sap.
6 sugar maple taps installed Monday afternoon/evening. Taps running immediately, over 100 drips a minute for some.
2 silver maple and 6 red maple taps Tuesday afternoon, and about 18 gallons sap collected from the first 16 taps; great time with the kids and their friends for this afternoon. Dripping even more.

Wednesday it froze (without freezes, no pancakes! Because no syrup. And obviously you can't eat pancakes without syrup).

Sunday was pretty slippery!
So much so that we had to consult the safety section of the Pleasant Street Sugarworks handbook, and found the following clearly stated:
"If any sugarmaker lands on his/her tailbone 3 times prior to even leaving his/her own property, sugarmaker must don spikes prior to entering anyone else's property. Dummy."
So on went the Kahtoola's and there was no further incident.
Safety first! Or at least 4th!

Thursday (today) got the evaporator set up and put all of the original 18 gallons through it.
Collected around 30 gallons from the 24 taps and boiled a little bit of that, the rest is stored for now.

The only untapped trees are the population of norway maples (including a couple crimson kings). We were hoping to get to those today but unboiled sap must come first (if it ain't boil'n its spoilin'!), so norway maples soon we hope!

No more freezes for a few days but you can get sap for a few days from one freeze, so things could still be pretty nutty over here for a bit!
Been great to run into many of you in our dog walking and sap collecting travels!

Andy

Hello again neighbors!

It has occurred to us that some of you may not have seen the Sugar Poem yet. This is very important. It could save you from becoming like us. Here is the link! This is your priority for the next 13 minutes.

The original 18 gallons plus 30 gallons have been combined into what we're calling the first batch and was down to about 3 gallons Saturday and then Sunday became the first batch of maple syrup, a little over 1.5 gallons maple syrup after filtering.
Saturday we gathered another 20 gallons sap (fun with R and family) and all of it got to boiling temperature; the start of batch #2.
When it is 65 degrees out you cannot store sap for long. So we made sure to bring all existing sap to a boil... a long day! Then today (Sunday) we gathered another 8 gallons (a sort of last hurrah from Friday morning's freeze) and added it to batch #2 in a boil.

We put in 8 taps Saturday across 4 norway maple trees, bringing us to a total of 32 taps, a new record for us. I wasn't sure about tapping them in 65 degrees, but it sure was time to get them tapped, so we did! J was a good help. Need another freeze and we're supposed to get one Tuesday morning. The surprise freeze Friday morning helped a lot. No freezes, no syrup.

R noted as we collected sap yesterday that during Pleasant Street Sugarworks operations it almost seems, just for a season, that the individual properties in the neighborhood become almost like one forest and it's pretty cool. I've also noticed this so I'm posting a re-run of a Pleasant Street Sugarworks update from the past:

================================================== ==============
March 22, 2023:
Whew!
Busy maple week! The evaporator has kept right up. Maybe 80 gallons sap or so over the last 2 days. Yesterday some buckets overflowed for the first time. Today none did, though it was close. Now just lots of finishing, filtering, bottling, labelling and distribution! Oh, and the sap is still coming. I think it's going to be a pretty good season for yield. We're finding it's well past dark by the time we can get to much of the gathering when it's flowing like this. Sorry about being a shadowy figure in your back yards!

When we do get to it [sap collection] during daylight, and even at night really, the collection [activity] is really nice. Somehow, because it is so much about the trees, the buildings and fences sort of fade away and there's just enough tree-focus that we can imagine being out in the woods. The 'hood' becomes a sugarbush, just for a moment. I will confess however that I haven't been able to imagine the mini-van being a team of oxen or even an agricultural crawler. I'll squint harder.
================================================== ===============

Andy, for the team
Pleasant Street Sugarworks

Just a note to mapletrader folks:
It froze this morning for a decent run today.
I have now collected 3 gallons of sap-per-tap season-to-date toward my goal of 10 (we'll see).
My zip code shows 5 more freezes in the 10 day forecast.
Maple open house weekend looking like perfect sugaring weather.
We might have a season yet!

Another mapletrader note:
The thread "Cloudy sap and cleaning tanks" was helpful to me.
Each year so far my buckets, which primarily are former grocery bakery frosting buckets, at some point get quite disgusting before the end of the season and I've been thinking I need to take them in for a cleaning at least once before end of season, but it seemed like quite a logistic challenge, bringing them all home and back out again.
Couple days ago it occurred to me that if I can take sap away from the buckets, surely I can bring water to them.
I suppose you could argue this is no less work, but at least its less of a do-or-die commitment. If I get interrupted, I can start again later.
And it can be done even if the sap is currently running.
So yesterday (Saturday) I carried a collection bucket in one hand and a water bucket in the other.
The one full of ants was the sap (that's the biggest risk... keeping the two buckets straight!) and a clean brush.
And I gave all 27 buckets across the 35 taps a little water, a little brushing, swish and rinse, and moved on.
After all those 70 degree days, with good sugaring weather ahead, I think it was worth doing!
Saturday collection was about a half gallon per tap.
Today's (Sunday's) freeze will give me a chance to finally bottle batch one and bring batches 2 and 3 to syrup.
Batch 4 has been boiled a little and batch 5 is as it came out of the trees, but now a block of ice.

I've decided I'll bring even questionable sap (in those 70 degree days it was all questionable!) to syrup, but in separate batches. One of the great things about being a batcher. Why not try and see. But I drew the line at dog-pee-yellow sap. That got dumped on the ground.

Hi neighbors!
It's been a busy sugaring season!
Many goals have been met, such as involving E and J in sap collection, and training J on minding the evaporator. I is now too big for the backpack but I got him out for collection one day too.
Around 4 gallons of finished syrup have been bottled in many Ball jars, and at least 2 more gallons are in various stages of completion. And we did manage much better production from the norway maples this year.
We did our final sap collection on the 27th as my executive decision to wrap up the season to tackle many other goals such as getting our puppy trained and getting our gardens growing. The last bucket of raw sap was brought to a boil on the 31st. The maple season in our microclimate will actually last through April 2 and maybe into April 3, and some area folks will no doubt take advantage. I think this is going to go down as a big season in Vermont.

Good to see MF Sugarworks up and running for the 3rd(?) year, and while we're sad to see no activity this year at Rivendell Sugarworks, we are excited to see the establishment of ADL Sugarworks. The buckets are up at Lang Farm. We learned from John that this sap is processed by his relative (cousin?) in Jericho who gets sap from "all over". That's a long way to come for sap, but no doubt it's a great excuse to stop in at the ol' farm! P Sugarworks was established a couple weeks ago. They did watch the sugarpoem a few years ago but not recently. This should serve as a stern warning to watch the video at least once per year.

Lots more work to be done! We'll finish boiling the several batches that are in process, hot pack them into jars, and between tasks we'll come around and pull the taps. Then we'll get our labels printed and start making some syrup available! That's what it boils down to!

Andy, for the team

Hi Neighbors!
We're well out of sap season now and the apple blossoms are out. I think our last sap collection would have been April 2 if we'd stayed with it (and I think we would have made the quart-per-tap goal). Other parts of Vermont went into mid-April. A solid average season overall according to preliminary reports. And an all-time record for West Virginia, as it turns out. We hot-packed our final two batches the other weekend (sooner or later you just need your fridge back, no matter how busy you are starting your garden). Final tally is 5.8 gallons, though we did actually make 6.8 gallons. This brings us to our sad story. Batch #5 (of 7) was boiled all the way to maple syrup, just a day or two after our last update. We even filtered it after boiling as usual, and it just did not taste right. Terrible sour aftertaste after an initial strange sweetness. It seems most likely related to the 70 degree days we had mid-season, though we can't really be sure. What to do with terrible maple syrup? It was late. There was no space or time for bad maple syrup. Two more batches awaited processing. One gallon of filtered 67-brix medium-amber maple syrup went down the sink. It was a sad day.

A few days later at lunch at work I relayed this story to a co-worker. His face went into a frown with seemingly ten seconds of silence, and then he said with the same voice and seriousness of expression that I would imagine him using if he needed to tell me he had terminal cancer, "Andy, if this ever happens again, I need you promise me, you will bring the syrup to my house. I will find some culinary use for it. There's got to be something for it".

Indeed, though it was 10 times worse than good maple syrup, it was still 10 times better than molasses, and people pay money for that stuff! Surely someone would take bad maple syrup for free at least?

So... we'll do something with any "bad" syrup next time, we promise!

Happily, though we still have PTSD over the sour sap incident, batches 6 and 7 were, just as inexplicably, lovely. As are batches one through four.

We finally got everything sorted and I believe every tree provider and propane tank provider who is not out of town has now gotten a sample! The gates are open till supplies run out for syrup purchase for anyone interested.

Also thanks to all those who contributed to our local cub scouts popcorn fundraiser! At least 3 neighborhood kids were involved. Some of you have your orders now filled, and others are about to!

Andy, for the team at Pleasant Street Sugarworks

Oh, and consider planting a maple tree! Generally, sugar maple out back (they hate road salt and soil compaction), red maple out front, and when in doubt, silver/red hybrid (Autumn Blaze, Freeman, etc). Enjoy your mature Norway or Crimson King maples, but they are now known to be invasive so don't let them have babies. Nice to see the canopy filling out again!