Cooling - no Vermont sugar yet

It's a cold Spring. Global warming?

Burlington Free Press.com | Top Stories

Count northern Vermont's sugar maples among those wallowing in the winter blahs.

Sugaring season across the state is dawdling, because continuous cold temperatures are keeping the sap from flowing out of maple trees and into the evaporators Vermont's sugar makers use to create syrup.

Friday through Sunday is Vermont Maple Open House Weekend, when the public is invited to visit sugarhouses to see how syrup is made and sample the products. Despite the cold, there will be enough syrup to go around. Still, farmers wish the sap flow from maples would pick up the pace.

"It's just barely dripping, if that. It's off to a very slow start in our bush," said Virginia Fleury of Fleury's Maple Hill Farm in Berkshire.

Like most syrup producers, Fleury is far from ready to write off the season. "We can make quite a bit in April if the weather comes off right. The problem is, in past years it warmed up rather quickly. The minute it hits 60 or 65 degrees, you might as well forget it," she said.