The Tapping Gambit

Chief of Operations writes:

“How do you know when to start tapping?” they ask. If they only knew that I don’t know, but I do it anyway.

It was so easy back in the day. The accepted wisdom was that if you were finished tapping by town meeting day (the first Tuesday in March), you would be in good shape to catch the best runs. How old-school that advice sounds now!

There are so many reasons for an earlier tapping date:

• In general, the best runs for northern Vermont used to be mid-March to mid-April. Global warming slowly seems to be shortening our winters, advancing the beginning and end of sugar season by several weeks.
  
• Modern tubing taps dry out more slowly than the old-fashioned bucket taps, meaning you can tap early and still get decent sap flow during the later runs.
• Most modern sugarbushes have considerably more taps than the ones of years ago. Getting their taps in before the early runs requires a head start.

I have found the most vigorous runs to be the ones that occur soon after tapping, so it makes sense to do most of your tapping directly before the first significant runs. It sounds straightforward, but knowing in advance when the best runs will occur is dependent on much speculation and guess work. Trying to accurately predetermine anything as unpredictable as weather is most often a fool’s endeavor.

I could start tapping in December like the operations with many more taps than mine, and never experience FOMO (fear of missing out) on the early runs. I find the thought of tapping that early an abhorrent idea. I have no intention of taking the punishment of sugaring all winter in addition to spring. This reaction is reinforced by considering how that activity would cut into my precious ski time.

And so, for the past recent years I rely on the best educated guess I can muster: the early-February gambit. Some years it makes for a winning game, and some years it ends in a checkmate.

-LC