"Entrepreneurs tap rich-flowing maple syrup in Vt." by Colin Nickerson | Globe Correspondent, March 18, 2013
GLOVER, Vt. — Cold weather meant a slow start to sap season. And when the taps finally began flowing this month, things only got stickier for a fledgling two-man syrup operation here on three steep knolls by Shadow Lake.
Vacuum pumps hurrying the sap along miles of tubing failed. The new high-tech $28,000 reverse osmosis rig clogged on the initial feed of raw sap. Then, an old tractor skittered into the big red tanker truck.
“Otherwise, it’s going great,’’ said Adam Parke, who with business partner Todd Scelza has sunk heart, soul, and nearly a quarter-million dollars — much borrowed from the bank — into the enterprise, called Shadow Lake Maples.
Parke’s cheer was genuine. Across the northland, the maple syrup industry is booming as never before. Production has doubled over the past decade to about 880,000 gallons per year, according to federal figures, thanks to swelling domestic and international demand and technological improvements that have boosted yields.
The sugary elixir has even become the target of organized crime....
More fearsome than thieves to many sugar makers, however, are forecasts of global warming.
Yeah, just ignore that cold start to the season.
The fact is you are a sap if you buy into any of the global-warming fart mi$t these days, and it's damn shameful on the part of the agenda-pushing "newspaper."
The industry depends on a fairly predictable stretch of frigid nights and warm days from late February through March – any prolonged break in that pattern could wreak havoc....
Well, too bad temperatures are going to be below freezing for the next week or so.
--more--"
Interesting combination. Maple syrup is so sweet, something one needs to wash down the Boston Globe. Always leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth, and the paucity of posts proves it. I'm just sick of the s*** shovel, folks. More than six years is enough.
UPDATE:
"Vermont lawmakers are pondering that question"
You are kidding, right? That's what they are working on up there?
