The Official U.S. Maple Syrup Almanac 2014 2nd Edition | Page 8

H
IGHL
IGH
TS SEASON
OF
THE

2014 maple industry at a glance. What people were talking about …

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ON THE COVER:
The Hamilton Farm
Sugarhouse, located along
Route 9 in Brattleboro, Vt.
during the first boil of the
season on March 11.
The Official U.S. Maple
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The Maple News.
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8

Sap cap gets
people talking

World’s biggest bulk buyer
sets up shop in Vermont

UVM’s Proctor Maple Research
Center announced in November a
revolutionary new way of tapping and
collecting sap. Researchers Dr. Timothy Perkins and Abby Van den Berg
discovered that when you lop off the
top half of a maple sapling, it gushes
sap, sucking it out of the ground like a
straw. They invented a patent-pending cap and collection method that
they claim could help sugarmakers
bolster their operations in years to
come. Skeptics worry about so-called
maple plantations driving down the
price of syrup. Indeed Van den Berg
recommends up to 5,800 saplings
per acre. But she said there is little
possibility that the technology could
become more cost effective than conventional sugaring. She says sap caps
would work best for sugarmakers
who have a thriving maple operation
with a few extra acres of open land to
plant saplings.

Bernard & Sons of St. Victor, Quebec
opened a bulk buying operation in an
old lumber mill in Island Pond, Vt.
seeking to buy 12 million pounds of
U.S. syrup every year. “Expansion in
the U.S. is much bigger than in Canada,” said Jacques Laterneau, Bernard’s
CEO. The company hired a longtime industry insider to
search around for new bulk syrup contracts paying what they
said would be a “market price.” The company said it would
even help fund expansion projects for sugarmakers that go
into contract with the company.

Frozen solid
The month of March was the fifth coldest in recorded history,
freezing out most sugarmakers and getting their seasons off
to a very late start. Some caught early runs in mid-January,
continuing the trend of early season tapping and boiling. But
most had to wait until April before they saw their first significant runs of the season. And then the trees opened up resulting in day after day of boiling for many producers across the
Maple Belt. In the end, the crop was not too far off the record
season of 2013. “We were pretty darn decent around here,”
said Renee Miller of Maple Valley, an organic co-op in Cashton, Wisc. which takes in syrup from 900,000 taps. “We were
about 85 to 90 percent of last year wh