C0NCORD, N.H. (AP) — The numbers are coming in strong for New Hampshire's maple syrup season — especially in the southern part of the state.
"This season was awesome. We made three times the syrup we made last year," said David Wheeler of Milford, who runs close to 1,000 taps and about 165 buckets throughout the Souhegan Valley. "It was the best season in my memory."
Peter Thomson, head of the New Hampshire Maple Producers Association, said he expects statewide production will top 100,000 gallons. That's the best production in at least four years.
Maple syrup only generates about $3 million annually in business, but tourists expect to see local syrup on the shelves, producers say.
The state's biggest syrup-producing region, around Keene, saw a particularly fine season. Thomson said the Clark family farm in Alstead produced more syrup than in 75 years of record keeping.
Producers are crediting the weather. February and March had long stretches of cold nights and warm days, the combination that drives sap up and down the tree, so that it can flow out of taps.
"I think it was the snow all winter. Snow and temperatures during the season are real critical," said Hank Peterson of Peterson Sugarhouse in Londonderry.
Peterson's production rose from 94 gallons to 154 gallons on the same number of tree taps.
"The flavor was excellent this year," he added.
James Dane, 80, of New Boston, whose family has been making syrup for 65 years, said his season was the best in four or five years.
Producers say their biggest issue this year was getting to the trees. Deep snow in the woods made it hard to string plastic piping between trees and to set up collection tanks.
"If you got out there soon enough (before afternoon melting), you could walk over the snow," Wheeler said. "Going up and over snow banks that were 6 feet tall, that was tricky."
Thomson said northern producers didn't reap the same bonanza, largely due to the weather.
"You can draw a line across the state on a map, intersecting Plymouth and running east and west. Anyone south of that had a bumper crop, but north of it we didn't," said Thomson, who has a sugar house in Orford.
The biggest difference was the snow.
"The snow kept the woods cold. While the guys in the south were getting those nice warm days, and nice runs, we weren't getting any," Thomson said .
Producers are also celebrating higher prices, up as much as 50 percent, to better than $35 a gallon. The increase is largely because a growing appetite for maple syrup from new markets, such as Asia, has used up a huge surplus from past years in Quebec, which generates about three-quarters of the world's syrup.
Costs have soared as well, especially for fuel to boil tree sap into syrup. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to create one gallon of maple syrup.
"We collected enough sap to fill a gasoline tanker trunk. That how much boiling down it takes to make (syrup)," Wheeler said.
The cost of plastic piping and drums, which are petroleum-based, and labor also has risen. "To get help out to work in that deep snow, you had to pay them a pretty good price," Thomson said.
