The wife and I went to visit our daughter at college last weekend (shhhh the campus is on lockdown and visitors are not allowed). Anyhoo… in years past, when we’ve made trips along a similar route during mid to late February, the hills and hollers were full of campfires choking the interstate with smoke as the maple sap was cooked down into syrup. During this most recent trip though, there wasn’t a smoke signal to be found.

The reason the cookers aren’t running is entirely due to the conditions here on the ground. Frankly speaking, the weather sucks and it’s not conducive to making maple syrup. There’s a foot of snow still on the ground and the daytime highs (20’s maybe 30’s on occasion) and nighttime lows (teens most nights recently) are still too cold for the sap to run freely. Now we have a ton of ice and additional snow on top of what we already had. Good times.

If this is something that interests you, here are the conditions needed for maple syrup production:

• Daytime highs of 40-degrees or better

• Nighttime lows can be in the 20-degree range

• 10-gallons of sap is ~ 1 quart of syrup once it is cooked down

I’ve been itching to make my own maple syrup since 2019 when I first kinda sorta tried my hand at it. Long story short, I didn’t make it past the collection step. Here’s why: Maple Sap Went Bad.

Now that all of my books are published and I’m taking a much needed break from writing, I’m going to be doing some of the things I’ve wanted to try (Dandelion Wine among other things) or fun projects and skills tests that I previously succeeded at and/or tried and failed.