2024 Maple Syrup Season by the Numbers

The 2024 maple syrup season is “in the books.” There’s still some clean up to do (the worst part of the season), but everything else is wrapped up. Here’s a summary by the numbers.

We tapped our first trees on February 18 with the vast majority of our trees tapped on February 24. This is the first time we’ve ever tapped trees in February. Our last sap collection day was April 7. So, our season was 6-7 weeks long. That’s on the upper end of what we think of as the duration of a typical season.

We finished the season with 1,040 gallons of maple syrup. That syrup was made from about 45,000 gallons of maple sap! Overall, that equates to just over 43 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup for an average of 2% sugar content in the sap.

Of the 45,000 gallons of sap we cooked, about 23,000 came from neighbors and 22,000 gallons came from the trees we tapped. Those 22,000 gallons came from about 1,000 taps, meaning we averaged over 20 gallons of sap per tap. That’s an exceptional year! An average year would be about 10 gallons of sap per tap. In addition, we averaged 2.1% sugar content.

In summary, it was an early and exceptional year. Now, we’ll start getting ready for next season and hope for a good growing year for the maples.