Your Fault: Maple Season Comes Early In Midwest

We can fix this with a tax and taking away your freedom and life choices, you know

Maple syrup season came weeks early in the Midwest. Producers are doing their best to adapt

Jeremy Solin doesn’t need a jacket right now on his family farm in northern Wisconsin. There’s no snow blanketing the dead leaves in the grove of sugar maples. There, pails already hang beneath spiles in the trunks that have started dripping sap. And the ground is muddy — a sign of the spring thaw.

But the timing is all off. “It’s just very disorienting,” he said.

He isn’t the only maple syrup producer feeling this way. In many parts of Wisconsin and the Midwest this year, the warmest winter on record drove farmers and hobbyists alike to start collecting tree sap for maple syrup a month or more earlier than they normally would.

Experts say that the shift in maple syrup season could be one clear indicator of the ways climate change is affecting trees, but they also think the practice serves as an important motivation to preserve forests. Producers have deeply personal ties to their land, whether they are Indigenous producers serving their community or have family-run operations and want to leave a legacy for the next generation. That relationship between people and their maple trees may ultimately make people more willing to adapt and be resilient in the face of seasonal changes.

Funny how they never mention that we’re experiencing an El Nino. Oh, and that warm periods happen. Na, they have to blame this on you, because, otherwise, how do they take your money and freedom?

With drier summers and less snowfall contributing to groundwater, Solin, who also works for the University of Wisconsin’s division of extension, says the unpredictability is the biggest challenge for sustaining maple syrup operations like his. And the lengthening of the trees’ growing season, with an earlier start and later end to warmer weather, could affect the sap too. So Solin is concerned about water, about the increasingly dry summers in his area and what that could mean for continuing to make quality syrup.

“You can be doom and gloom, but you’ve also got to think about solutions,” Suzukovich III said. He pointed out that Indigenous people have been coming up with those kinds of solutions for thousands of years, giving maples a break when they needed it and diversifying the kinds of trees that they tap besides maple.

Oh, wait, the Native Americans have noticed this happening for thousands of years? So, it’s not unusual? It’s just part of the natural order? Huh. Doom cancelled.

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