Warm winter, storm damage from Fiona could hamper N.S. maple syrup production

Maple syrup producers are bracing for an uncertain season as an unusually warm winter lingers in the province.

Nova Scotia saw one of the mildest Januarys on record this year, with warmer temperatures and less snowfall than usual.

For optimal sap flow, maples need cold, frosty nights of about –5 C and warmer, sunny days of about 5 C. 

"If it continues like this, it will be a poor year because you're just not going to have the flows," says Chris Hutchinson.

Hutchinson is the owner of Hutchinson Acres, which taps about 60,000 trees in the interior of western Nova Scotia, roughly between Aylesford and Bridgewater.

He says producers need cold weather to tap their trees because if they tap when it's warm, the spiles used for collecting sap fall out when the temperature drops.

"The whole month of December, January, we've never had more than one or two days with a minus."

Hutchinson had already tapped many of his trees in January, but when the province was hit with extreme cold in early February, about 40 per cent of his taps fell out, so he and his crew had to go around and pound them all back in.

He was busy in the woods tapping when he spoke with the CBC on the phone early Tuesday, but Hutchinson says it's possible he will miss some sap if he can't finish tapping in time.

Kevin McCormick, who operates McCormick's Maple, says the warm temperatures may also cause the season this year to be short. Without "real hard cold" days with consistent temperatures below 0 C, maple trees come out of their dormancy more quickly, and without snow cover, the sun warms the ground, contributing to that effect.

"So everything happens much faster.… The trees will just progress very quickly and go from dormancy to budding, which kind of ends the season," says McCormick, who has about 35,000 taps in Rodney, near Springhill.

Damage from Fiona

In addition to producing maple syrup, McCormick sells equipment and supplies to producers, so he's regularly in contact with others in the industry across the Maritimes.

He says many producers are still grappling with the impact of post-tropical storm Fiona, which slammed the province with winds up to 171 km/h on Sept. 24, 2022.

Many trees were downed entirely, while others were left leaning or with damaged tops and weakened root systems, making some survivors more vulnerable to future storms — including lesser storms than Fiona.

"It's taken generations to grow our maple trees and just a few short hours in Fiona have changed our forests for a lifetime and will take many years to get collection systems back to pre-Fiona conditions," he says.

On his own woodlot, McCormick has found fallen trees with tap holes dating back to the late 1800s.

"We've seen these big old trees that probably were seedlings sometime in the mid 1800s. They stood until Fiona. So … kind of a sad reality that Mother Nature, you know, the climate's changing."

McCormick says across the province, he expects there will be about 30 per cent fewer trees tapped this year due to damage from Fiona.

'It was a tangled mess'

Jason Haverkort's maple operation in St. Joseph, southwest of Antigonish, was decimated by Fiona, with an estimated 40 to 50 per cent of trees downed, and thousands of others left with broken limbs or tops.

"Everything was down. It was a tangled mess, you know, there was tops of trees were laying on the roots of the ones behind them, so it was quite a mess."

Haverkort was in the midst of tapping on Tuesday and expected to be finished on Wednesday, with the possible launch of sugaring season later this week.

He expects his total number of taps to be between 6,000 and 7,000 this year — a far cry from the 12,000 trees he was tapping before Fiona.

"I doubt I'll see production and tap numbers as high as they were in my lifetime anymore."