The sweet smell of spring is arriving very late this year, and that may not be good news for those in the maple syrup industry.

As April approaches the halfway mark, snow still sits on the ground, daytime temperatures remain cool and, while the sap is dripping, it is intermittent and slow.

“It’s very late this year. Usually the sap is running in the middle of March, but it needs minus 5C at night and about plus 5C during the day and we haven’t been getting that. It’s been a crazy year,” said Ken Shulz, executive chef at Delta Grandview Inn.

Mining the liquid gold is something very new for the Huntsville resort. “We have maple trees on our property and I thought about tapping them last year but I couldn’t get it together. This year I have about 20 trees tapped and 32 pails,” said Schulz.

The tapped trees are close to Grandview’s main building. It is not exactly a major operation, but one that will hopefully produce enough sap – and consequently maple syrup – for Schulz to use in his culinary endeavours.

“We are just doing this for fun, to have our own syrup for cooking purposes,” he said.

Schulz uses his own equipment for the small enterprise. “I got 60 sap buckets from my great-grandfather. He used to tap 300 trees and had 300 buckets. I just wish I knew what happened to the others, but then we are a very large family,” he said.

Schulz first learned the art of tapping trees as a small child. “My dad’s friend had a sugar bush and we used to go and help out,” he said.

Two weeks ago, armed with his grandfather’s pails, a drill, spigots and a hammer, Schulz tapped the trees. “The sap ran well at first, then not at all. The most sap I collected in one day was seven full, 16-litre pails. Now I’m only getting two or three pails. It’s slowed right down.”

Schulz and his culinary team have been boiling the collected sap in a steam kettle in the Grandview kitchen. If the weather had been more co-operative, he said he would have used an open fire in the interest of authenticity.

“With the steam kettle I can reduce (sap to syrup) in a day. My fear is over-reducing and an open fire is a little more challenging. I remember when I was a  kid we used to stay up all night to watch the sap over the fire, so all our work didn’t go down the drain.”

With a ratio of 40 to one (40 litres of sap to make one litre of syrup) and an unpredictable weather forecast, Schulz reckons he’ll end up with about six litres of sweet sticky stuff. Still, that will be enough to ensure the freshest of ingredients for his recipes, which include maple creme brulee and a maple sauce for trout.

Nearby Deerhurst Resort has a significantly larger maple syrup operation. “We have about 1,500 trees tapped, but it was a late start and it’s not been a great year,” said executive chef Rory Golden.

“Usually from one tree we would make about one litre of syrup. This year we are only getting about half that and now the sap is coming out milky which is not good for making syrup.”

Although the cold weather  and heavy snowfalls this past winter are causing a major concern among maple syrup producers in Quebec, one Bracebridge company says it’s too soon to panic.

“(The season) is starting very late this year, but the sap is still running so we can’t say yet what the outcome will be. If we get the proper conditions it could still be an average crop,” said Ruth Knappett of Maple Orchard Farms of Canada Ltd, which imports maple syrup from across Ontario in large barrels. After processing, the  maple products are sold internationally.

Asked if she was concerned  a poor crop might result in a maple syrup shortage, Knappett replied: “Not yet. Some places further south have already had an average crop, and it’s been several years since we had a poor crop.”

Further north along Hwy. 11, John Julie of the Muskoka Maple Sugar Shack and Pancake House is far from worried.

On site, Julie taps about 200 trees in the old pioneer tradition, primarily for tourism purposes, and he hasn’t noticed much difference from other years.

“I have two big producers, one in Port Loring, the other in Trout Creek, who make maple syrup for me and they are having about a normal year,” he said.

“We pack 8 to 10 tons of syrup for our store and the fellows who produce for me are expecting the same (yield). The season is no more than half over right now.”

Meanwhile, according to Schulz, making syrup is a relatively simple process. For those who would like to try it at home, what is required are some maple trees, a few tools and a kettle in which to boil off the excess water from the sap.

The right climate also helps, of course.