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Tough Maple Syrup Season

It has been a very difficult maple syrup season, which is coming to an end soon.

BUFFALO, NY - It's mid-April and many maple syrup producers are still trying to get sap from trees late in the season, since it's been one of the toughest years for getting sap.

Eric Randall is the owner of Randall Maple Farm in Alexander in Genesee County, and has been in the business for nearly 25 years. He says the sap did not flow well this season, including weeks when the sap didn't even flow at all during a usual peak time.

"Unpredictably bad for us. February was a nice start...made a fair amount of our crop in February... and then March our traditional Maple month came on and never warmed up, and the sap just did not run," Randall said.

Randall also says there were a lot of challenges this year including extreme warm and cold spells, and recent wind storms brought down dozens of Maple trees with the sap lines still attached.

"Wind storms have taken out trees. Early March snows where we got over 2 feet of snow actually buried lines and took lines down," Randall explained.

He says this season he had to work day and night and save every drop of sap, but did manage to get a near normal crop.

"It was very very difficult and you were constantly at it. You saved every drop and you processed it into syrup."

And heading south into Wyoming county, a similar story at several maple farms in Attica.

Greg Zimpfer is a maple producer, the President of the Western New York Maple Producers, and works at Merle Maple Farm where they are trying the get more sap late in the season.

"Usually by now we are basically done - just bizarre and unpredictable is about the best you can call it," Zimpfer said.

But the hard work and stretched out season is paying off.

"Most of Western New York right now is in the 80 to 85 percent of a crop range," Zimpfer said.

And even with the warm up finally coming, it will soon be too late in the season to get anymore quality sap.

"The buds will come out on the trees and when that happens the syrup basically becomes unusable to you...off flavor becomes buddy," Zimpfer explained.

"We are at the end of our season, we have run out of time. We've made some really excellent syrup but it's been difficult every step of the way," Randall concluded.

Maple producers are hoping to get a few more days of sap before the season ends.

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