The warm weather we are having may have some people thinking about getting a jump on spring, but it is too early for maple syrup season.
Don Giffin taps about 1,800 trees in south Chatham-Kent and says with cold weather coming back after the warm weekend it is too early to start making syrup now.
"It'll happen probably after this next freeze up, we are going to have two or three days of warm weather and then we're going to have more cold weather," he says. "Closer to the first of March of the end of February, that's the correct time to go."
Giffin says there is sap in the trees now but it is a more bitter sap that acts like anti-freeze over the winter and it won't make good quality syrup.
And he is not worried about the warm winter reducing the sap flow. He says one of the best years he ever had in terms of both quality and quantity of sap was in the spring of 2000 when there was no snow and he didn't need to wear boots going into his sugar bush.
