SWEET TIME
Warm-up sparks late-starting maple season
ARGYLE, N.Y. » Sixty- degree temperatures and bright sun triggered a hard sap run, kicking off a late-starting maple season that had been locked in winter’s icy grip.
State agriculture Commissioner Richard Ball celebrated the industry locally on Friday with a traditional tree-tapping ceremony at Schneible Maple’s new sugarhouse.
“We started boiling last night,” Owner Chip Schneible said. “It’s always exciting.”
He’s one of several area producers who are firsttime participants in Maple Open House Weekends scheduled for March 23-24 and March 30-31. Others are Sugar Creek Farms in Charlton, and Matt’s Maple Madness and Skinner’s Sugarbush LLC in Rensselaer County.
“We just became certif ied organic,” said Schneible’s partner, Missy Streicher. “We’re really looking forward to the educational aspect of Maple Weekends. I have two daughters, and Chip has a daughter and son.
“We’re big on kids learning where their food comes from.”
Streicher’s daughter, Lauryn, is this year’s Upper Hudson Maple Producers Association maple queen. Almost 30 operations will be open for tours
on Maple Weekends.
“This always brings back great memories for me,” Ball said. “I remember collecting sap as a short person, behind a horse, going around to buckets on the trees. It’s just a rite of passage, a rite of spring.”
“We’re not just celebrating the first crop, we’re celebrating families and history, we’re celebrating tradi- tion and generations on the same place doing the same thing,” he said. “It kind of lets you know that in spite of what you hear or read in the papers, America right here in Washington County is alive and well and doing great.”
New York is the nation’s second-leading maple state behind Vermont, and accounted for about 19 percent of total U. S. production last year.
“We have more people tapping and producing maple syrup and we are catch- ing up to Vermont,” said state Sen. Betty Little, RGlens Falls. “We encourage people to come out and see how maple syrup is made. It’s fascinating.”
Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner, D-Round Lake, said sugarmakers are valuable ambassadors for New York’s agriculture industry. This week, the Assembly Agriculture Committee will start its meeting with a pancake breakfast highlighted by fresh New York maple syrup, she said.
“That’s one meeting no one is ever late for,” she said.
However, the 2019 season got off to an extremely slow start. Ideal sugarmaking temperatures are high-30s to low- 40s during the day, and mid-20s at night.
But there hadn’t been any significant warmup until a few days ago, as the weather had been below freezing during most of February and the first half of March.
“We’ve been on hold for about two weeks,” said maple producer Mike Grittoli, of Granville. “It looked like the weather was going to break and it didn’t. We’ve had great seasons the past three or four years. This year is going to test us all.
“We haven’t had a winter like this in a long time.”
Area sugarhouses hosting open houses are in Saratoga, Rensselaer, Warren, Washington, Columbia, Fulton, and Hamilton counties. Some hold pancake breakfasts as well.
“We’ve never done the tour before because we haven’t had the space to host
people at our farm,” said Kathy Skinner, of Skinner’s Sugarbush in Wynantskill. “But we recently built a large garage. We’re very much looking forward to having people come out and see what a small sugarmaker does.”
Signs directing motorists to sugarhouses will be placed along roadsides throughout the area on Maple Open House Weekends. For a complete list of participants, directions and additional information go to: www.upperhudsonmaple. com.