How Climate Change Is Changing Maple Syrup - Mpls.St.Paul Magazine

How Climate Change Is Changing Maple Syrup - Mpls.St.Paul Magazine

Photos by Sheila Mulrooney Eldred

syrup-pump-header

Mary (pictured) and Don Somers didn’t need to use snowshoes to inspect their trees and pumps this year.

It’s a sunny, 64-degree day, and the sap is running at Somerskogen Sugarbush in Minnetrista. Steam is rising from the sugar shack, scenting the air with maple.

The only thing wrong with this picture? It’s early March, and Don and Mary Somers are almost finished with this year’s syrup run. As soon as buds pop on the sugar maples, the flavor changes and the season is done. Most years, that’s in mid-April. But recently, the syrup seasons have become harder to predict. A year ago, sugar makers were tromping through the woods on snowshoes in mid-April. This year, the season began while many were enjoying their snowbird vacations in Mexico or Hawaii in late January.

Gambling on when the season will start has become a lot harder, says Ryan Brubaker, a forester with Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources who works out of Deer River in Itasca County. He’s been tracking the first and last syrup runs since 1988.

“The last 15–16 years, the volatility starts to come in,” he says. “You can’t bet on the longer, steadier seasons. The seasons are more erratic on when they start and when they end.”

It’s important to get the timing right because the tapped holes can start to close up after a few weeks.

Stu Peterson, owner of Camp Aquila Pure Maple Syrup in Otter Tail County and vice president of the Minnesota Maple Syrup Producers’ Association, has always counted on the season running from March 15 to April 15. This year, his first boil was February 25, just the second time he’s boiled in February.

“What we’re seeing is extremes,” he says. “Last year we had five feet of snow on the ground; this year, there’s no snow….It’s just that every year is so different. The normal is abnormal now.”

The new unpredictability is just one way climate change is changing the industry in Minnesota. Other factors include the increased number of extreme weather events which often leads to more trees lost in wind storms. And the gradual rise in temperature means that the range of maple trees will eventually shift north, encroaching on the southern maple syrup operations. Weather changes can even impact the amount of sugar in sap.

bottled-syrup

Finished syrup is labeled with the date before being bottled and stored.

A Minnesota Tradition

People have been harvesting maple syrup in Minnesota for hundreds of years. Ojibwe harvesters used axes to get at the sap and birch bark containers to collect it. But while Minnesota is one of the top producers in the country, the amount of syrup bottled here is a mere drop in the bucket: Vermont makes 66 times as much syrup as Minnesota. Quebec makes close to 2,000 times as much as Minnesota.

“There are producers in Vermont and New York and Quebec that are bigger than all the taps in Minnesota total,” says Peterson. With about 100,000 taps across the state, Minnesota is considered more of a boutique industry, he says.

Like many, the Somerses started their operation as a hobby. They’d just bought a property on Whaletail Lake with 17 acres of maple forest in 1994. After finding some syrup equipment left behind, they drilled 23 taps into the trees, letting the sap drip into plastic bags. Now, the couple has 1,100 taps connected via plastic tubing to a vacuum pump.

Their detailed recordkeeping reveals how the transition to spring has changed: In their first 20 years, the first day of sap fell before March just twice. In the last 10 years, that first day has come before March three times, including this year, when the sap started running in January.

The couple typically waits for their son to drive up from Rochester on President’s Day weekend to start setting up the taps on each tree and attaching the plastic tubing that crisscrosses the forest.

Sap flows fastest when days are above freezing and nights dip below. But with the temperature reaching 50 in January this year, Don says, “My wife and I thought, we’d better get our rears in gear, and we put the lines in.”

In February, the warmest in Minnesota history, the sap slowed to a trickle during warm spells. Still, by March 3, the Somerses had already made over 15 barrels of syrup. On warm days, the Somerses process the sap as fast as they can, because the quality of the sap tends to degrade more quickly. Normally, it takes around 40 gallons of sap for one gallon of syrup. But as the days heat up, the sugar content also lowers—meaning it takes more sap to make syrup.

By early afternoon on the 64-degree day in March, the Somerses measure the sugar content of the sap at 1.6 instead of the usual 2. They started the day with 2,500 gallons of sap in tanks; by 2 pm, about 500 gallons remain to run through the reverse osmosis process.

Two days later, on March 13, they noted buds elongating and swelling, signifying the end of quality sap. Brubaker describes the change in taste as a “Tootsie Roll-y” flavor. And with that, the season was over.

“It’s a little bit like farming. Everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything. We’re just pawns in this game.”

–Don Somers

The Impact of Climate Change

At first glance, longer summers would appear a boon for maple syrup, since it means a longer growing season for the trees. But, according to the Climate Change Committee of the Ontario Maple Syrup Producers Association, that benefit is overshadowed by several factors:

1. Periods of drought hinder root growth. Trees need their roots to draw water in when the temperature falls below freezing; that’s how they refill their sap.
2. Warmer temps and longer summers mean more invasive species and disease, making the southernmost forests less optimal for sugar maples. Scientists believe the range of sugar maple trees will eventually move north. (Sugar maples live for about 100 years, so this will take time.)
3. More wind “events” that snap six-foot diameter tree trunks in half have increased. In Canada, many producers lost more than a third of the trees they tap during windstorms in 2022.
4. Eventually, the “erratic” seasons we’re seeing now could mean a permanent shift that would result in much shorter seasons altogether.

To guard against these scenarios, sugar makers can plant new trees that will hopefully take over if their taller peers are lost to storms. And red and silver maples, which are more tolerant of different environments, can also be tapped, although there is less sugar in their sap.

“It’s a little bit like farming,” Don says. “Everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything. We’re just pawns in this game.”

Even if Minnesota’s syrup makers are mostly hobbyists, Brubaker says he and others in the industry are really worried. Losing a marker of the transition from winter to spring would mean the loss of community and traditions. “Friends come over and play cribbage while watching water boil,” he says. “It’s a fun time in Minnesota.”

Part of the tradition is the governor’s annual proclamation that March is Maple Month in Minnesota. Though this year’s season started in January for some, Gov. Tim Walz signed the proclamation on Feb. 29: WHEREAS: The annual spring ritual of tapping maple trees and producing maple syrup and maple syrup products marks nature’s transition from winter to spring in Minnesota’s hardwood forests.

No word on whether that may change, but January and February don’t have quite the same ring as March for Minnesota Maple Month.