Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet. And use science to find everyday solutions. I’m Megan Hall.

Earlier this year, one of our Possibly reporters, Will Malloy, visited a maple syrup farm. And he was surprised to learn that those farmers weren’t harvesting as much maple syrup as they have in the past. 

He was curious if climate change had anything to do with it, so he joined up with reporter Grace Samaha to find out.

Hi Will and Grace. 

 Will Malloy: Hi Megan!

Grace Samaha: Hi!    

Will Malloy: We started our journey by chatting with Andraly Horn. 

Andraly: I’m the owner of Open Farms Retreat here in Cumberland, Rhode Island. 

Will Malloy: When we visited Andraly, it was mid March and he had just started his spring season by tapping maple trees! As a farmer in southern New England, he taps maple trees every year, collecting sap to make into maple syrup. At his home

on the farm, he shared a little bit of that sweetness with me!

Andraly Horn: All right, I’m gonna give you some from a jar that we made. This was made on March the 10th. And I say it’s some of the nicest maple syrup that’s around just because I made it myself. What do you think?

Will Malloy: It’s delicious.

Will Malloy: I only sampled a spoonful of Andraly’s maple syrup, but it takes a lot of effort to even make that much! 

Megan Hall: Like, how much?

Grace Samaha: As a general rule of thumb, you have to collect about 40 gallons of sap from a maple tree to make just 1 gallon of maple syrup. 

Will Malloy: And once you’ve collected all that sap, you’ve got to boil it for hours to evaporate off the water and concentrate it down into a sweet syrup.

Andraly Horn: And you can see why maple syrup is so expensive because it does take a lot of effort and a lot of energy to evaporate that amount of water off the sap to get down to syrup. 

Megan Hall: Wow! It sounds like Maple syrup is really hard to make! Does Andraly just spend his whole year tapping trees and boiling syrup? 

Grace Samaha: While that does sound like fun, he really only taps trees for a couple weeks a year. 

Will Malloy: You see, the sap in maple trees isn’t just flowing all the time, ready to be collected and boiled down for our pancake-eating pleasure. There need to be a very specific set of conditions. 

Andraly Horn: So the temperatures need to be in the 20s at night and 40s during the day.

Grace Samaha: Historically, this happens in southern New England around March. 

Will Malloy: If you don’t get that temperature fluctuation from the 20s to 40s, you don’t get the right pressure changes inside the tree to make the sap flow out. 

Grace Samaha: Andraly says, this winter has been especially odd in northern Rhode Island, switching between very cold temperatures and very warm, never quite settling into that regular 20s/40s fluctuation. 

Will Malloy: And because of that, Andraly collected less sap and made less syrup than any other year he’s tapped trees. 

Andraly Horn: the weather wasn’t right so we only I see I got … ‘bout 70 gallons of sap … There’s been times when I’ve boiled over 300 gallons ..

Grace Samaha: Andraly says that this winter might be particularly weird. But it’s also part of a troubling trend.

Andraly Horn: ] I think it’s getting warmer and warmer. And so mapling may not be around in this part for a long time. But I – I can’t predict the future but … I don’t think it’s gonna stay the same. 

Megan Hall: Not stay the same… What does that mean?

Will Malloy: Well, if winters continue to heat up, it will get harder and harder to collect sap and make maple syrup, at least around here. 

Grace Samaha: By 2100, the range of sap-producing sugar maples may move north by up to 250 miles!

Megan Hall: So, should I start stocking up now?

Will Malloy: I wouldn’t encourage you to start hoarding maple syrup. It’s probably better to focus your energy on slowing down climate change!

Megan Hall: Great! Thanks, Grace and Will! That’s it for today. For more information, or to ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, go to the public’s radio dot org slash possibly. Or subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. 

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Possibly is a co-production of The Public’s Radio, Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society and Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative.

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