Somerset County leads Pennsylvania in maple production, but producers say this year\u2019s syrup season fell short after weather swings disrupted the freeze-thaw cycle that helps sap flow.<\/p>\n
Crowds packed the first day of the Pennsylvania Maple Festival in Meyersdale, where maple treats and demonstrations drew support for local sugar makers. Behind the scenes, though, producers said they are coming off a season that didn\u2019t measure up to years past.<\/p>\n
Bobby Edwards, director of the Pennsylvania Maple Festival, said the ideal conditions for sap flow are \u201ccool nights and warm days.\u201d Instead, he said, \u201cWhat we had was 15 [degrees] at night and 75, 80 [degrees] in the day, and that’s terrible for the sugar water to run.\u201d<\/p>\n
Edwards, who runs maple production demonstrations at the festival each year, said syrup production depends on a freeze-thaw cycle. Producers said when that balance is off even for a few days, it can affect the entire season.<\/p>\n
Melissa Blocher, co-owner of Millroy Farms, said a warm stretch in March hit at a critical time. \u201cUnfortunately right in the middle of the season in the middle of March, we had seven days where it didn’t freeze,\u201d she said. \u201cThose seven days really hurt us. At that point the flavor of the sap changes and the sugar content tanks when you have those warm days. We need the freeze and thaw in order to make the sap run.\u201d<\/p>\n
For some producers, the impact was severe. Christine and Everett Sechler, co-owners of Sechler Sugar Shack, said, \u201cWe probably had our worst maple season ever.\u201d They added, \u201cWe got about a third of a crop.\u201d<\/p>\n
With less syrup coming in, producers said they may have to make tough decisions and adjust to changing weather patterns. Edwards said, \u201cIf they spent a lot of money on supplies and some of those types of things, they’re going to be hurting to make up for that this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blocher said producers are also seeing the season shift earlier. \u201cTypically we used to say the season was mid-February through March,\u201d she said. \u201cThere is a little bit of a seasonal shift and we’re starting to see the season now begin at about the end of January.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even with a challenging year, producers said customers should not expect major shortages. \u201cI would say most of the producers are going to have enough to supply their customer base,\u201d Blocher said.<\/p>\n
Still, the Sechlers said the focus is already on what comes next. \u201cA farmer of any kind always has to look toward next year,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
The Pennsylvania Maple Festival will continue for the rest of the week in Meyersdale and is set to end Sunday evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Somerset County leads Pennsylvania in maple production, but producers say this year\u2019s syrup season fell short after weather…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-173463","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-pennsylvania","9":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","10":"tag-pennsylvania-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}