We can go from -30C at noon to +10C at midnight (and the winds will be strong). The thing that is different with places like Dawson Creek, is that we get Foehn winds in the winter (local name is chinook (snow eater)). He was successfully working with sugar maples 4 years ago in a conventional way. I am on the eastern slopes of the Rockies. The last poster was in central BC, which means he is south of me and on the other side of at least one mountain chain. A question I have, is the character of the sap going to be changed by the warmer conditions? This work was sort of intended to keep places like Vermont producing maple syrup long after there would no longer be the freeze/thaw cycles to produce flow naturally. So writeups conjured up the idea of having a quarter section (or whatever) of trees, and producing billions of gallons of sap. And this young tree, can apparently produce as much sap as many much more mature trees. A relatively young sugar maple gets "beheaded", and on the top of the trunk is attached a vacuum apparatus. As global warming advances, the ability of the USA-NE to produce conditions necessary for conventional maple syrup production will largely go away, which is expected to have large consequences.Īgain, as I understand things, about 10-12 years ago, someone (in Vermont? At UVermont?) came up with a new method. In the USA-NE and Quebec (nearby other parts of Canada?), this freeze thaw is only driven by the day/night. The original poster was writing in 2012, last poster in 2014.Īs I understand things, conventional production of maple syrup requires cycling between freezing and thawing. Various estimates of how much land to simply survive are available, but if you want to add even tiny amounts of sugar, and fats or oils to that basic amount the space requirements go way up way fast, in most climates.Īnd I'm sure there was a thread about the subject on this site a while back with lots of figures and ideas. Proteins are harder but not much harder (small numbers of permacultured livestock if you're into that sort of thing to supplement the perfectly adequate plant proteins and some source of B12). Carbohydrates are relatively easy (fruits and vegetables, potatoes, grains, beans, shrooms (and all those rapidly popularizing perennial e Eric Toensmeier). John Jeavons' figures on how much land it takes to feed a person are the basis for thinking about what to grow and how much to expect. See: It's part of a larger question many are researching and experimenting with. If I were in the PNW I'd go for raspberry and blackberry syrup instead. As for maples, the website below suggests Douglass maple for SE Alaska maybe it will work for your area too. In each case there's a reason they aren't (with the exception of blue- and strawberries, birches-and rhubarb, sorta) a major product of commerce or home production for syrup or grown outside a limited area. There are lots! of plants used to make syrups and sugars outside the eastern deciduous forest, including berries, apples, other fruits, roses, pines, birches, and rhubarb, in addition to sugar beets and cane. Write back in 10 or 20 years and let us know. If the amount of lead time it will take to grow maple trees and find out whether you've wasted your time and money and land for nothing isn't daunting, go for it. And then there's global warming, which may be warming nights more than days where you are, making it even less ideal for sugar production. The season was over in a few weeks by the time it was warm enough for anything to be leafing out the sap was useless (bitter/sour). There was a huge difference not only in sap production but sugar content of sap depending on the weather, and since at best you have to boil off about 40 gallons of water from the sap to get a gallon of syrup, trying to produce it in much less ideal climate could be amazingly expensive (fuel) and time consuming for a product that will end up being inferior in taste anyway. (but still colder than any day in deep winter where you and I live now) The contrast between night and day was the main driver of sugar production. Sugar production there is high when the weather is clear, in late winter, leading to cold cold nights and warm(er) sunny days. I did some maple sugaring as part of teaching at a nature center when I lived in PA and New England. I've wondered about trying some sugar production in the Bay Area and looked into it a little.
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