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Sweet Season: Maple Syrup Producers Finding Good Weather

Wikimedia Commons David Pape

When you pour it on your pancakes, you know it's good. This is the time of the year when there's a lot of hard work put in by maple syrup producers to sweeten your life. When nights are cold, but days are above freezing is prime maple sap collecting time.

Theresa Baroun is Executive Director of the Wisconsin Maple Syrup Producers Association. She says the weather recently has been good for production, the tree-tapping began a bit later.

She says there are producers who still do the traditional bucket or pail hung on a spike in the tree, but many more are using a system akin to dairy production...

"....buckets are used along with bags, but people are moving to a tubing system to make it less labor intensive. It the tubing system, plastic tubing comes from the tree and a gravity system that flows into a bulk tank or stainless steel tank. Making your collection a lot easier rather than bags and pails..."

Theresa Baroun says sales have risen as people are becoming more aware of nutrition..

....it's been said that a banana and the nutrient value of maple syrup, two tablespoons is the same with magnesium, potassium and stuff in your maple syrup...."

It takes approximately 40 gallons of maple sap from the trees to make one gallon of pure maple syrup. Nothing is added to the sap to make maple syrup, only water is evaporated away. Wisconsin is fourth in the nation in maple syrup production. She says what makes it even better is that many of the producers are family-run operations.

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