Tapping Maple Trees: Early Sugaring Season in the Adirondacks

We began tapping trees on 2/21/24, though we probably could have even started a few weeks earlier. This is the warmest winter on record, and probably the earliest sugaring season we've ever had. We aim to put up around 500 buckets across about 11 acres.
The sap is flowing, and soon we will collect and boil it into maple syrup!
Tapping is completed. 500 buckets across 10 acres, and another 15 acres on a tubing system. Over the coming weeks we’ll be collecting sap and doing our first real boil to make maple syrup! The weather has been too cold for the sap to flow but the forecast shows it should be warm enough this week into next (3/16 maybe?)
This year is way earlier than historic sugaring season dates, before rapid climate change created this new normal (on average 3 degrees warmer than 100 years ago). The sugaring season has trended earlier in the year by several weeks on average, but this is the most extreme we've seen yet. We’re at over 2200’ elevation in the high peaks of the Adirondacks so tend to be a little later than most others in New York.
Maple syrup production is especially sensitive to changes in climate, because the trees need below-freezing temperatures during the winter and a range of temperatures during late winter or early spring to produce sap.
“It’s less predictable than it used to be. I can remember, as a kid, we had perfect sugaring days. It would be in the high 20s at night and then sunshine and high 40s during the day and the sap would just run - and it did that for six weeks. Now, it’s all over the place,” he said.
“My father and I were talking about when he was younger and they always said that the sugar season doesn’t officially start until the rivers have gone out for the third time - but they haven’t really even frozen up that much this year … All that old folklore that we used to go by, for years, is now out the window. You have to play the weather and hope for the best outcome.”
- Ned Whitney
__
This is the highest elevation farm and sugarbush in New York, at Camp Treetops & North Country School. It’s a 220-acre educational farm/school/camp in the chilly High Peaks Region of the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York, USDA Zone 4a.
Some of the work we want to demonstrate are so-called “alternative” or “non-conventional” agricultural practices. These include disciplines such as agroecology (agriculture that mimics natural ecological systems), permaculture (sustainable & self-sufficient design), regenerative agriculture (conservation approach that focuses on topsoil regeneration, biodiversity, improving water cycle, biosequestration, & mitigating climate change), agroforestry & silvopasture (integration of trees & shrubs with animals), organic agriculture (growing & processing food without the use of synthetic fertilizers & pesticides), and food sovereignty (the right to healthy & culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound & sustainable methods), among others.
This KZbin channel and these videos are for educational purposes and for my own personal documentation of various projects.