Maple Fest Marks the End of an Early Sap Run
Drew Jones, manager of Hopkins Memorial Forest, tends the annual boil in the sugar shack. He works long nights stoking the stove to keep the sap reducing; this year he stayed as late as 1:00 A.M. That’s the nature of maple season. When the daytime temperatures start climbing over freezing, the sap flows.
Maple syrup is a rare and unique food native to the Northeast. Williams College has produced its own maple syrup for decades. You can buy it from Kate Fletcher in the Center for Environmental Studies ([email protected]).
This year’s precocious spring meant that the sap ran heavily early in the season. By mid-March, which is usually the high-point of production, the days were already pushing an impossibly warm 80˚F, and the sap was no more.
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