no maple? ok… NOW i am mad!

A little known secret about me… I L.O.V.E. maple.  

I don’t indulge often… I rarely eat pancakes, so no maple ingestion there.  I don’t eat donuts.. but back in the day I would jump for the maple eclairs.  Maple Oatmeal… all mine! And, I did once have a nasty habit for the maple frosted scones at Starbucks. (May I follow all of this up by saying… I didn’t know then, what I know now.)  When I find a recipe that is sweetened with the sugary tree juice, you can bet I try it.

That is why I was so disappointed to come across this article: All Tapped Out, via The Daily Climate.

 

All farming depends on the weather, but few foods are more dependent on a specific climate than maple syrup. After all, for the sugar maple’s sap to run at all requires cooperative weather — freezing nights followed by warmer days.

But with the build-up of invisible greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, those temperature swings don’t happen as reliably.  At risk is an American tradition that stretches back even before Europeans discovered the “New World.”

“Weather controls it all,” says Marty Fitzgerald, a fifth-generation sugarmaker in upstate New York.

And, in recent years, the weather has been weird.

What is most interesting about this article is the education I gained about how maple… er, sap… is extracted and produced into syrup.  Honestly, I was pretty surprised that it is $65 million per year industry.  

If you are slightly interested in syrup production and the effects from global warming and temperature shifts, this is a fun read.  If not, don’t read it… but be warned… imitation maple syrup may be close at hand.