Lilley speaks to PPH about maple sap runs
The Portland Press Herald interviewed Jason Lilley, sustainable agriculture and maple professional with University of Maine Cooperative Extension, about this year’s promising maple sap run, which might yield above-average quantities for some producers. Lilley said producers in southern Maine and along the coast have enjoyed a few weeks of early runs, and the sap quality from those runs have been “fairly average.” Drought conditions the state suffered last summer don’t seem to be impacting the sap right now, but because the state has now seen several years of extended droughts, he and his team are working closely with producers to monitor sap quality and identify any areas where groups of trees might be showing signs of stress and decline during the growing season. “We do not expect to see any differences in sap yield or sugar content that we would be able to correlate with last year’s drought,” Lilley said. Yahoo News shared the PPH report.