My March Madness

My march madness doesn't have brackets, or scores. It doesn't have a winner or losers. My march madness doesn't depend own numbers of layups scored. It depends own sunlight, night to day temperature ratios and the time it takes to tap all of the maple trees. My march madness is all about maple syrup.

The maple syrup season typical starts in mid to late February and runs until the end of March, sometimes the beginning of April. Where Maine Maple Sunday falls at the peak of the season on the 4th Sunday in march. This year however it is about 3 to 4 weeks late. This is not fun and it not good. It's like have your favorite collage basket ball tournament set back a few weeks. This is all about the weather, the way the sap flows is a convection like system between the buds and the base or the tree. Freezing in the night, to keep the ground cold and high 30 to 40 degree temperatures in the day, to warm the top of the tree warm is what pulls that sap. And when these conditions don't happen that sap will not run.

However, as the temperatures start to warm, late as it may be, the run will happen. This is the tournament. We step off, into the maple stand, drilling holes and placing buckets, then returning to see what the tree has yielded. It can become a bit of a obsession. You start cleaning the evaporator and the rest of your equipment, watching the long term weather religiously, and going around your grove to pick out trees that blog sunlight, but we love it! Going around the trees own a beautiful day, collecting sap in 5 gallon buckets, all while trying not to trip own your snow shoes.  

But that is what must be done, and it becomes all worth it, when we boil. It's a party really, friends and family coming over to stand in the sauna of steam, waiting for the surge level to come close to perfect so we can sample this liquid gold.