Syrup season is upon us a little early this year. For reasons I’d rather not contemplate (i.e., the fiery ball of global warming bearing down on us) this February in Michigan is something like 50 degrees warmer than it’s supposed to be. It’s not great news for the apple trees or my honeybees, but it’s great news for pancakes. That’s right, I said pancakes!

We’re looking at about a week of perfect maple syrup weather: warm days and freezing nights. For the benefit of my readers in warmer climates, “warm” in this context means above 40. We tapped eight trees today, and the sap flow was unbelievable.

Every time we opened a tap, a torrent of sap immediately started running and we would yell “We hit an artery!” and “We’ve got a bleeder here!” The neighbors were probably concerned, but we had fun. Come to think of it though, no ambulances showed up so I guess that shows you who we can’t count on when we have an actual emergency in the yard.

It takes about 45 parts sap to make one part syrup, so with eight trees running, we’re hoping to get a gallon of syrup out of this week-long season. We’ll let you know how it goes! By the way, if you’re interested in learning more about the whole maple syrup process, you can read about it here.