Banner year for maple syrup veteran
WEST BROOK — It has been another strange winter and David Dickinson reckons the unusual’s becoming usual.
Dickinson has worked on his fifth-generation family maple business in West Brook, Cumberland County for the past 50 years.
One month ago, it appeared that spring was arriving early, with warm temperatures and disappearing snow. Now March appears ready to go out like a lion.
“I think they got February and March mixed up, because this is February weather,” he said in an interview.
Maple season seems to be coming earlier with each passing year, something Dickinson said is likely part of the broader trend of global warming. When he first returned to the family farm from college back in the 1960s, a typical season ran from about March 20 to April 20. This year, he was tapping trees on Valentine’s Day and bottling syrup before the end of February.
Cold nights and warm days are good for producing sap, and this year’s temperatures have been on the borderline of prime conditions.
“We had a lot of weather that was minus 2 or 3 at night, and then plus 2 or 3 in the daytime,” said Dickinson. “That’s good, but if it had gone to minus 5 and then up to plus 6, that would be better.”
Overall air temperature is an important factor, but so is elevation.
When the weather stays cold, as it has through much of March this year, he said the sugar woods at warmer, lower elevations tend to do better than those higher up.
“In my own woods in Canaan there is about a 300-foot elevation drop from the top of the woods to the bottom,” he said. “The bottom was running pretty good, and the top was hardly running at all. Just a degree or two makes a big difference.”
With the temperature at around -11 C on Monday morning, there was no sap running, and Dickinson and his workers were busy with other chores, like bottling syrup, filling orders and cleaning up the shop.
Other Cumberland County farms like those in Fenwick are a bit lower and warmer, and have been doing really well.
But Dickinson is far from disappointed with his season. One benefit of the cold weather has been that it keeps the sap cold, making for good- quality syrup. And the season isn’t over yet. “It has to warm up again someday before July and it will run,” he said. “I’m satisfied with the season so far. The quality has been really good, and we have more than we had at this time last year.”