Up and Down
Week of March 8, 2026 – March 14, 2026
by Katie McLaughlin, Environmental Educator
Snowpants and shorts in the same week? Sounds like March is upon us!
With the below freezing temperatures at night and above during the day, it also means that it is MAPLE SEASON!
At Baltimore Woods we tap just 10 trees to collect sap and demonstrate the different methods of collection during field trips, but would you believe that I was once part of a team that would tap over 600 trees in just a few days? Yep. We ran about a mile and a half of tubing as well in that sugar bush.
But why do we tap so many trees to collect maple syrup? I would say there are two main reasons. First being the season itself to collect sap is very short and weather dependent. To collect sap we need these yo-yo temps of 20s at night at upper 30s or low 40s during the day for the sap to move through the tree. If it is below freezing, the sap won’t move, and if it is too warm the maple trees will begin to bud causing the syrup to become bitter instead of sweet. Depending on what the weather is doing, large maple productions may start the first taps sometime in February, and finish collecting sap mid March to ensure they won’t have any bitter sap.
The other reason being it requires a lot of sap to make a little syrup, it’s a 40:1 ratio of sap to syrup. On average the sap contains 2-3% sugar, whereas syrup has a 67% sugar content. However, did you know that not just maple trees can make syrup? Birch trees also have been used to make syrup, but due to the fact that their sap has much less sugar it takes far more sap to make syrup, oftentimes it is a 100:1 ratio, or more than double what it takes for maple sap to be boiled into syrup.
Maple season is also one of my reminders that sweet spring is coming soon. As the snow is melting I know I’ll start to see more signs of life around the forest, from salamanders and birds migrating to patches of green popping up where the snow melts. As emotions fluctuate with “false spring and second winter” I remember that the sap is flowing on these days where the weather can’t quite seem to make up its mind, and the longer that these ups and downs last, the more sap we can collect!
We invite our members to enjoy a weekly blog written by our naturalists. Every blog will be uniquely different but always inspired by nature. We may share a memory from a recent hike at The Woods or teach you about an animal or plant that lives on the preserve. No matter the topic, we will be sharing with you our passion for nature and celebrating the connections we all have to the natural world. Each blog will be connected to a weekly set of activities and ideas to help you put nature in your hands, even if you’re at home!