Yesterday, about three inches of snow covered Vittum Hill Road and the emerging sugar maple leaves. Luckily the temperature was just at freezing. The little leaves survived. But it was quite an odd sight.
I visited Loudon sugar producers to pick up more sap samples. Marty and Anne Boisvert gave me a sample of the nitre they scraped off the sap pan at the end of the season. Usually it is a cinnamon brown. This year, the nitre was black as tar with flecks of clear crystals in it: another chemical mystery for the UNH team.
At the Moore's Mike and Richard were building a new floor in their big storage barn. I walked around the maples behind the barn. They soar up 80 to 100 feet, each one with spacious room for gigantic crowns. The Moore's boiled until the end of March when they got a last run of very very light golden amber. But it tasted like Grade B or even C syrup. Mike says the buds are opening three weeks earlier than ever.
