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HOUSING STUDY: Understanding Vadnais Heights demographics PAGE 17
Foraging ahead with maple tapping BY JACKIE BUSSJAEGER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
WHITE BEAR TOWNSHIP—Late winter brings the usual conditions that start maple sap flowing, but in a winter that has rarely dipped below freezing, what happens to the maple syrup harvest? It’s a question that a lot of Minnesotans are asking right now, as we enter the usual window for the maple syrup harvest to begin. Tamarack Nature Center Naturalist Shannon Stewart has been watching the trees closely this season. During the warm weather at the end of January, she put a few taps on trees in her neighborhood just to see what would happen. “I have a black maple in my neighborhood that I tapped on the 27th and probably had been running for a week at that point,” she said. “We essentially missed the first run.” Savvy syrupers who put their taps out early might have been able to collect a batch during the warm spell, but it’s nowhere near the end yet. “We probably will get another sap run, but it’s going to be based on what the weather is going to do to the trees,” she said. Right now she expects a cold snap will return before spring truly arrives. “My thought was that the trees were going to flower, and winter would come back, and the flowers would freeze and die.” The best syrup is collected before the trees flower, Stewart explained. The sugar in sap produces the energy trees use to put out flowers and leaves, and once a tree flowers, it creates “buddy” sap that isn’t quite as sweet and delicious as the maple syrup we know. “The sugars start to change and you get what people in the business call metabolized syrup. It’s considered an off flavor,” Stewart
Love Story
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SEE MAPLE TAPPING, PAGE 6
In honor of Valentine’s Day Wednesday, Feb. 14, Press Publications reached out to our readers and asked for submissions of a “love story” in one photo. Submissions ranged from a couple going on 54 years of marriage, to a young family enjoying the holidays, to a mother and son riding a carousel. See the submissions above and online at presspubs.com. SHANNON STEWART | CONTRIBUTED
Sap from the tree will slowly accumulate into buckets, which will be boiled down in an evaporator to concentrate the sugar content.
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