A record-warm winter of 2023-24 has maple sap running earlier than many producers can remember it ever starting up. PC: Fox 11 Online
DE PERE, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — If you’ve been thinking about fresh maple syrup to go along with your pancakes, you’re in luck, because the season is getting underway in much of Northeast Wisconsin.
Jon Baroun, owner of Maple Sweet Dairy Farm in De Pere, says if conditions cooperate, syrup from the farm could be ready in about two weeks.
Making maple syrup starts with a familiar Wisconsin weather recipe: warmer days paired with freezing nights. That back-and-forth helps sap flow from maple trees, and Baroun said timing is everything.
“Middle-to-late February is usually when we typically look to start tapping trees. Like I said, it all depends on the weather patterns and the flow,” he said.
Temperature swings can actually help extend the season. Baroun explained that a brief return to colder weather can give trees a kind of restart.
“If you get a snow or a little freeze up for a couple days or a week, that’s like a reset. And it resets the trees and then they’ll start running again once it warms up. But if you get a prolonged warm period for two, three, four weeks, you know, where you don’t really get good freezing temperatures, it’s gonna warm the ground up and pretty soon, the trees are gonna go into bud,” he said.
Once trees begin to bud, the season wraps up. The process is also a numbers game, as it takes about 40 to 50 gallons of sap to produce just one gallon of maple syrup. Baroun said last year was a big one at Maple Sweet Dairy Farm.
“Last year, we collected our most we ever collected on the farm — about 31,000 gallons of sap out of the trees. And we’ve done as little as about 12,000 gallons,” he said.
Even with the recent springlike weather, it’s still winter, and temperatures could swing colder again. That makes it too early to know how this year’s season will turn out.
But either way, fresh syrup should soon be flowing from local producers — a seasonal tradition that depends entirely on the weather.
Bubolz Nature Preserve in Appleton is hosting “Maple Syrup Saturday” to celebrate the start of the season. Two events are scheduled for March 7: a pancake breakfast and a hands-on adopt-a-bucket tapping event. Click here for more information and to buy tickets.
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