Maple sap harvesters across northeast Iowa got the season started nearly three weeks early thanks to warmer than normal temperatures.
Floyd County Conservation Director Adam Sears says this is the earliest start to the sap season he’s seen in 10 years. “Normally, next week’s when we start thinking about tapping trees, not 10 days ago. Everything’s just moved forward, but we’re hoping we get a little longer season this year, rather than just an earlier season,” Sears says. He says the recent series of 50-degree days changed his usual timeline and they’ve already collected about one third of their normal sap collection.
“We hope that we still get the full season that we’d normally get on top of it, but we don’t really know that. It depends on how much it warms up continuously,” he says.
Floyd County Conservation typically harvests close to ten thousand gallons of sap each season, which yields about 200 gallons of maple syrup.
(By Grant Winterer, Iowa Public Radio)