Maple Syrup
Maple Syrup, A Taste of Nature
Maple Trees Tapped
This interactive google map shows how many maple taps were driven in for each county. New York State and Vermont are the nation's biggest maple producers, but there are several other states that have smaller numbers of trees tapped. This is a consolidation of county level data, those counties with only one farm reporting maple production, were not included in the survey results, which depresses tap counts in counties that are marginal maple producers.
Data Source: USDA Agriculture Census, 2012. Maple Taps. Counts. https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/
WVU researchers promote maple syrup production in West Virginia – West Virginia Explorer
With more than 400 million maple trees, it’s no wonder maple syrup is one of the fastest-growing industries in West Virginia.
To help keep the momentum and overcome challenges, a team of West Virginia University experts wants to educate landowners, foresters and loggers on the nuances of southern sugarbush management.
According to Jamie Schuler, lead researcher and associate professor of silviculture in the Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design, continuing to grow the industry requires increasing the number of tapped maple trees.
“West Virginia has more total tappable trees than Vermont, but there are several barriers that limit participation in maple syrup production,” he said.
Those barriers include limited landowner awareness as well as misinformation about forest resources and perceived forest management or harvesting principles.
NPR
There's probably more written on how to kill a bigleaf maple tree than how to grow one, according to Neil McLeod of Neil's Bigleaf Maple Syrup, a farm in the tiny northwestern Washington burg of Acme.
"It's hard to kill," McLeod says with a wry smile. "A great tree. Perfect weed. It makes good syrup."
In his humid, densely-scented sugar barn puffy steam pours out of an evaporator through several big stacks and into the cold winter air. The damp perfume permeates his T-shirt and clouds his glasses as he leans over the vats, inspecting them for any out-of-control foaming.
How climate change could disrupt maple syrup production in Upstate NY – syracuse.com
"Doug Thompson, 68, has been tapping maple trees since he was a kid growing up in the North Country. Like many long-time maple producers in Upstate New York, Thompson says things are changing."
"We’ve been making syrup here my whole lifetime,” said Thompson, who taps about 9,000 trees in and around Gouverneur, in St. Lawrence County. “In general, we’re seeing the maple season starting two weeks earlier than when I was a kid."