Thursday, February 27, 2014

Some maple syrup has been boiled

A handful of producers have boiled maple syrup from sugar bushes in Southwestern Ontario when temperatures rose as high as five degrees last week.

But the return of the deep freeze has put the season on hold again.

Snow is so deep in the Haliburton area that producers who normally work with lines at chest height are having to stoop down and sometimes even dig them out of the snow, reports Todd Leuty, agroforestry specialist for the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food.

Leuty said many producers were busy tapping trees last week, but with the return of extremely low temperatures this week, trunks are frozen and ought not be tapped because of the damage that would cause.

Leuty said the small volume of sap that did run last week was mainly used to simply rinse pipelines.