Maple Season on the 45th Parallel. One Year After the Storm That Almost Ended It.
Apr 19, 2026
45th Parallel · Life on the 45th · Spring 2026
Maple Season on the 45th Parallel. One Year After the Storm That Almost Ended It.
The sap is running. The producers who stayed did a lot of work to get here.
Late February up here and the ground is still frozen. I am out in the woods before six with a drill, a bucket, and a coffee that has gone cold. The sap does not care what time I showed up. But I wanted to be there when the first drop hit the bottom of an empty pail, because that sound means the season has started and everything else can wait.
This spring that sound means something more than usual. A year ago, an ice storm came through this part of Northern Michigan and knocked out a third of the state's maple syrup production in three days. The producers who are running this season did a lot of work to get here. This post is about maple syrup, how it is made, and what it took to still be making it.
The Tree Behind It All
The sugar maple. It runs this whole operation.
Not all maples are worth tapping. Red maples will run sap but the sugar content is lower and the season closes out earlier. Silver maples will give you something if you push it. Neither is what you are after. The tree you want is Acer saccharum, the sugar maple, and up here in Northern Michigan it is in the woods all around you if you know what bark to look for.
Sugar maples are slow. A tree needs to be ten to twelve inches in diameter at chest height before it is ready to tap, which takes 40 to 60 years depending on conditions. They can live 300 to 400 years. The tree I tapped last February was probably already standing when my great-grandparents were born. It did not seem bothered.
The bark on a mature sugar maple breaks into irregular, shaggy plates. Gray, rough, easy to spot once you have seen it a few times. In spring it disappears into the tree line. Come October it is the one making people hit their brakes on M-32. It is a useful tree in just about every season. What it does in February and March is what we are here for.
Why the 45th Parallel
Forty-plus years of growth before this tree sees a drill.
Michigan is one of the top maple syrup producing states in the country and the northern lower peninsula is a big reason why. The 45th Parallel cuts right through Otsego, Charlevoix, Antrim, and Cheboygan counties, and the climate up here is exactly what sugar maples need: cold winters that push the trees into deep dormancy, a slow thaw in spring, and those shoulder-season days where temperatures cross the freezing mark in both directions inside 24 hours. That swing is what drives the sap.
Michigan has three times more tappable maple trees than Vermont, which has historically led the nation in production. Three times. The state is tapping about two-tenths of one percent of them. The producers who figured out the opportunity early have been running serious sugarbushes in these counties for generations, most of them wood-fired, most of them family-run, and most of them not particularly focused on being found.
The same hard winters and late springs that make people question their choices in March are exactly what produce good syrup. Up here those two things have always gone together.
How Sap Actually Flows
Clear as water. Barely sweet. Everything happens after this point.
The sap runs when nights drop below freezing and days come back above it. Overnight, pressure builds inside the tree as gas contracts and moisture pulls up from the roots. When temperatures climb back above 32 degrees, that pressure releases and sap moves toward any opening it can find, including a fresh tap hole. On a real run day you can stand next to a tapped tree and hear it drip. It sounds exactly like what it is.
The sap coming out of the tree looks like water. Nearly clear, barely sweet, with a sugar content of about two percent. It does not look or taste like what ends up in the bottle. That part happens later, over a lot of heat and several hours.
The season ends when the nights stop freezing or the trees start budding out. Once budding starts the sap chemistry shifts and the flavor goes off. When a tree buds, that tree is done for the year. The whole season is four to six weeks in a normal year. Some springs it is three. You do not schedule around it. You just go when it runs.
Tapping and Collecting
A good run fills pails fast. You check them every day when the weather is moving.
Tapping starts in late February or early March, usually while there is still snow on the ground. Drill a hole about two inches deep into the tree at a slight upward angle, tap in a metal or plastic spile with a mallet, and hang your bucket. One tap per tree under ten inches in diameter, two for larger trees. The hole heals over by fall and the tree does not hold a grudge. A healthy sugar maple handles decades of tapping done right.
One tap on a good tree will produce five to fifteen gallons of sap over the season. On a real run day a bucket can fill in hours. You collect daily, keep the sap cold, and boil within a few days. It ferments fast once it warms up. This means going out every day when the weather is moving, which in March up here means going out in whatever is happening outside.
Larger operations run tubing systems connected to vacuum pumps that pull sap directly to a central holding tank. More efficient, less scenic. The bucket method means more trips into the woods. Most people who have done it both ways still have a soft spot for the buckets.
The Boil
It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. All of that water has to be boiled off. This is why real maple syrup costs what it does, and why the four-dollar bottle at the grocery store is not maple syrup in any meaningful sense.
The boiling happens in an evaporator, a large flat pan over a sustained fire. The sap goes in thin and clear. Water drives off as steam, the liquid concentrates and darkens, and the sugars caramelize slightly as they reduce. Sugarhouses in March smell like nothing else. If you have not been in one during a boil, that is worth fixing.
The boil runs until the syrup hits a sugar content of around 66 percent, which corresponds to a boiling point 7.1 degrees Fahrenheit above the current boiling point of water at your elevation. Serious producers check this with a hydrometer or a refractometer. When it hits the mark it gets filtered hot to pull out the sugar sand, then bottled immediately and sealed. Done right, it keeps for years. The margin between finished syrup and syrup that will ferment or crystallize in the jar is not wide.
Early season boils run light and delicate. As the season goes on and sap sugar content drops, the syrup darkens and the flavor deepens. The color in the bottle tells you when in the season it was made.
Grading the Good Stuff
All four are Grade A. The difference is timing.
The USDA updated the grading system in 2015 and dropped the old Grade B label. Everything is Grade A now, split into four categories by color and flavor.
Golden Color with Delicate Taste comes from the first runs of the season when sap sugar content is at its peak. Light, almost floral, and it goes fast at farmers markets once word gets out. Put it somewhere it will not get buried.
Amber Color with Rich Taste is mid-season. Balanced, classic, what most people picture when they think maple syrup. This is probably what your family poured on pancakes growing up, if they were buying from a real producer.
Dark Color with Robust Taste and Very Dark Color with Strong Taste come late in the season. Deep, intense, holds up in cooking and glazes where lighter syrup gets lost. A lot of people who say they do not like maple syrup have only tried Golden. Give them Dark and ask again.
The Storm
March 2025. The ice storm hit during sap season and did not leave much standing.
On March 28, 2025, an ice storm hit the northern lower peninsula right in the middle of sap season. It ran three days. By the time it was done, an estimated 100,000 sap-producing sugar maples were down across the region. Miles of tubing buried under fallen trees. Evaporators sitting idle with no power. Producers who had been running their lines for years standing in the woods looking at what was left.
The Michigan Maple Syrup Association estimated the storm wiped out roughly a third of the state's annual maple syrup output. Some farms lost 25 percent of their trees. Others lost more. Around 800,000 gallons of sap went with the storm before anyone could collect it. Most operations were without power for a week to ten days.
Jennifer RiChard runs Hidden Acres Sugar Bush right here in Gaylord. Before the storm she had 17,000 tappable trees. Four thousand of those are gone permanently, too damaged to recover. The ones still standing took a hit too. Before the storm her trees averaged around two percent sugar content, meaning roughly 65 gallons of sap per gallon of syrup. After the storm that sugar content dropped by nearly half, because the trees were pulling their sugars inward to repair the damage. It now takes her close to double the sap to make the same gallon. The RiChards spent months in the woods with tractors, chainsaws, and woodchippers getting lines back up. When the final damage number came in, it was $300,000. Insurance covered about a third of it. Federal aid has been slow.
Christi Peterson at Maple Moon Sugarbush and Winery in Petoskey had nearly 20 miles of sap collection tubing destroyed when the trees came down on top of it. A forester evaluated the woods and the verdict was that the lines were not salvageable. She pulled everything and started over. She did not tap at all this season.
This spring, one year later, another ice storm came through in almost the same window. Most producers made it through without major damage this time. But the ones who had already lived through 2025 were watching the forecast differently than the rest of us. RiChard said she could not stop checking the weather. That is the kind of thing that stays with you.
The trees themselves are the other part of this story. Sugar maples that have been through storm damage do not quit. They divert their sugars to repair first, which is why sap content drops after a bad year. But the trees keep growing. The ones that are still standing after 2025 are still running sap. Damaged crowns, missing branches, thin canopy, and the sap is still moving. These trees were here long before any of the producers tapping them, and most of them will be here long after. That is not nothing.
Producers expect it will take five years to find a new normal in terms of production, and another five to ten for the damaged trees to fully recover. In the meantime, if you are buying maple syrup this season, buy it from someone up here. They earned it.
Who's Still Running
There are people in these counties who have been tapping trees for decades. Most of them came through 2025 and kept going.
Witt's Maple is right here in Gaylord. Ivan Witt is a registered forester who has been running maple operations for over 20 years. They are wood-fired, expanding to a second location in Boyne Falls, and producing around 1,200 gallons a season out of the Gaylord operation alone. You can find their syrup at Jo Jo's Natural Market, Big Buck Brewery, and a handful of other local spots, or order directly through their site.
Currey Farms out of Charlevoix has been tapping trees since the early 1900s. Over a century of the same family on the same 320-acre property, same process, no additives. They sell by the barrel to other producers and in smaller quantities to people who know to ask.
The Michigan Maple Syrup Association keeps a full directory of producers across the state and hosts Michigan Maple Weekend every spring. It is worth the drive. The association also has an ice storm relief fund running for producers still rebuilding from 2025. If you want to put money somewhere useful, that is a direct line to the people who need it.
Beyond the commercial operations, there are homesteaders all over Otsego and Antrim counties tapping a few trees each spring, boiling in the backyard, and filling enough jars to get through the year. If you have a sugar maple on your property, there is no reason you cannot be one of them.
Make Your Own
The backyard version of this is more straightforward than most people assume. You do not need a sugarhouse or a commercial evaporator. You need one good sugar maple, a drill, a spile, a five-gallon bucket, a big wide pan, and a turkey fryer. I have done it this way and ended up with a jar of syrup that I thought about well into July.
What you need:
- A sugar maple at least 10 inches in diameter at chest height
- A 7/16 inch drill bit and a drill
- A spile and a hook or hanger for the bucket
- A five-gallon food-grade bucket with a loose-fitting lid
- A large, wide, shallow pan for boiling outdoors
- A turkey fryer or outdoor propane burner
- A smaller pot and your kitchen stovetop for finishing
- A candy thermometer
- Cheesecloth or a fine mesh filter
- Sterilized mason jars for bottling
Spiles, taps, and tubing are available at most hardware stores in Northern Michigan during maple season. You can also order starter kits online from maple supply retailers or through any homesteading supply shop.
How to do it:
1. Tap the tree. In late February or early March, drill a hole about two inches deep at a slight upward angle, roughly three feet off the ground. Tap in your spile with a mallet. Hang the bucket and put the lid on loosely so debris stays out but air moves through. Check it within 24 hours on a warm day. It will fill faster than you expect.
2. Collect and keep it cold. Pull sap daily when it is running. Keep it below 38 degrees Fahrenheit. It ferments quickly at room temperature. A cold garage or a cooler with ice works fine early in the season. Plan to boil within a few days of collecting.
3. Start the boil outside. Set up the turkey fryer outside with your wide pan. Get the sap boiling hard. Surface area matters more than depth here, which is why a wide shallow pan beats a deep stock pot. Do this outside. Boiling 40 gallons of sap indoors puts enough moisture in the air to peel wallpaper off the walls. Keep the heat high, add more sap as the volume drops, and skim any foam off the top as it forms.
4. Finish on the stovetop. Once you have boiled down to a manageable volume, a gallon or two, bring it inside and finish it in a smaller pot over medium heat. You are looking for 219 degrees Fahrenheit, seven degrees above the boiling point of water at your elevation. Use the candy thermometer. Do not guess on this one.
5. Filter and bottle hot. Strain the finished syrup through cheesecloth or a fine mesh filter into a clean pitcher. Pour into sterilized mason jars while it is still hot, around 185 degrees, and seal immediately. Sealed and stored at room temperature it keeps for a year or more. Once open, it goes in the refrigerator.
One tap on a good tree in a decent season will get you somewhere between a quart and a half-gallon of finished syrup. That first jar is worth the cold mornings.
Going All the Way to Maple Sugar
If you have gotten this far you might as well know that syrup is not the end of the road. Keep boiling past the finishing point and you can drive out enough water to crystallize the sugars entirely. That is maple sugar: dry, granular, concentrated, and it keeps indefinitely in a sealed container. Use it anywhere you would use white or brown sugar. It goes further than you expect.
To get there, take your finished syrup and continue heating it to about 262 degrees Fahrenheit, stirring the whole time. Pull it off the heat and keep stirring as it cools. The sugar will crystallize and start to crumble as the temperature drops. Work fast once it starts to go. Spread it on a baking sheet to finish cooling, break it up, and store in an airtight container.
Two cups of syrup gets you about one cup of sugar. Indigenous peoples across the Great Lakes were making maple sugar long before European settlers arrived, using it as a primary sweetener and for trade. The knowledge of what these trees could produce has been part of this landscape for centuries. We are latecomers to a very old practice.
Maple cream is the other option worth knowing. Boil syrup to a slightly lower temperature than sugar, cool it while stirring continuously, and it sets into a soft spreadable paste. It goes on toast in a way that is hard to explain and easy to overdo.
On the Table
Every spring up here, before the ice is off the lakes, someone is already out in the woods. Boots on frozen ground, fire going under an evaporator, steam off the pan at first light. This spring that is more true than usual. The producers still running after 2025 did not get here by accident. They spent months in the woods with chainsaws and came back out the other side and put their lines back up. The sap running this April went through a lot to get to your table.
If you have a sugar maple on your property, tap it next winter. If you do not, find someone local who is making it and buy from them. The syrup is better than anything on a grocery store shelf, and this year more than most, the people producing it earned every jar.
The pancakes are the easy part. Getting the syrup is the whole thing.
