Maple sap rises as trees warm up and begin to emerge from their dormant winter state. That happened up to five weeks earlier than normal this year, according to area producers.

Ken Willis of Willis Family Maple Farm in Iron River is in his sixth season in business and has been involved in making syrup since he was in junior high school and has yet to see a season like this one.

Yet the yield hasn’t suffered so far, he said.

“So far I am optimistic; the weather looks good,” Willis said.

GINO VENDITTI OF Stag Farms works on bottling a batch of maple syrup. The farm in Breitung Township produces about 80 gallons of syrup a year. (Jim Paul/Daily News photo)

Willis has more than 5,500 taps on his 80 acres of land and sells most of his syrup wholesale by the barrel. He’s been getting 2 gallons of sap per tap per day, or more than 10,000 gallons a day. It takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup.

Last year was a bad one, Willis said, as he was only able to produce 14 barrels for the whole season. The farm already has surpassed that this year and Willis hopes to reach 45 to 50 barrels by the end of the season.

Willis said demand for real maple syrup is strong and growing every year.

While Willis is concerned about the changing winters, he hopes warmer winters will just mean an earlier start to the season.

“The trees still have to produce sap to bud out, so either all the maple trees are going to die because of climate change or we are going to adapt to it — hopefully we adapt.”

Gino Venditti of Stag Farms in Breitung Township first began making syrup about eight years ago. He started small, making syrup for friends who soon offered to buy more. The business has grown ever since.

This year, Venditti tapped 240 trees and has collected just over 2,600 gallons of sap. He hopes to hit the 3,000-gallon mark by the end of the season, which he thinks may last another week.

While he began tapping trees the last week of January, his earliest start, the season’s end will be about the average date, Venditti said.

He has produced 77 gallons of syrup so far, a better yield than in 2022, when the season started later.

“Last year we were moving along pretty well,” Venditti said. “Then we got hit with that two feet of snow April 1 and then it went to 80 degrees a week later and that shut everything down.”

Warm days and cold nights are the ideal conditions to make sap run — about 40 degrees during the day and 20 degrees at night, he explained. Too-warm daytime temperatures will make the trees bud and once that happens the season is over, as the syrup would be bitter.

For next year Venditti is looking to add a new evaporator and reverse osmosis system. To do that, he will need to tap more trees and add a vacuum system to his tap lines which will produce 50% more sap.

Aside from having to start tapping trees weeks earlier than normal, Venditti does not see any negative effects the warm winter had on the season. The lack of snow, in fact, made tapping the trees and hauling the sap out of the woods to the sugar shack much easier, he said.

But he is concerned what the shifting climate might mean for other parts of Stag Farms. Venditti also raises bees and operates a small vineyard. The bees, he thinks, did benefit from getting out of the hive and foraging early this year. But his vines have budded and he worries this new growth may freeze if the weather turns cold.

It could ultimately affect his maple syrup production as well.

“If what we are experiencing is the new normal, then yes, it will change how we do things,” Venditti said. “If we warm up and we do not get as much snow and we warm up faster, then we get a short season, so there may be some impact in terms of the season length as well as an economic impact for those of us that are making (syrup) for more than just fun.”