Now that daytime temperatures are rising above 32 degrees, you’ll start to hear traditional New Hampshire sounds in the woods: power drills, tap hammers and people muttering to themselves as they repair their maple syrup lines.
In theory, maple season should be ramping up because temperatures are now above freezing during the day and below freezing at night, which means the sugar maple sap is flowing. But with a foot or more of snow in the woods, the season will be slow to start.
“The trees are frozen. The trees are cold. That snow is tight around the stump. You know, the first 40-degree day, it’s gonna drip, but it’s not going to be a good run. It’s gonna take a while. It’s gonna take a little bit to thaw them trees out for them to want to start to really give a good run,” said Mike Moore, the fourth-generation owner of Sunnyside Maples in Loudon.
If all goes well, Moore added, the snow could extend the season by keeping nights cold past the traditional slowdown in March.
“We’re gonna have a later end, probably. I’m sure we’ll go into April this year, I would say a pretty good chance,” Moore said.
Maple syrup has been a part of New Hampshire since before it was New Hampshire, with Indigenous peoples tapping trees and boiling sap long before Europeans arrived, but these days the state is only a medium-scale producer.
New Hampshire sold 152,000 gallons of syrup last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s less than Pennsylvania and Michigan — not to mention Vermont, which sold 20 times as much as the Granite State.
Dozens of commercial sugar shacks operate throughout the state and scores, maybe hundreds, of amateurs take a turn at it each winter. Maple Syrup weekend, March 21 and 22 this year, remains a major tourist draw.
As for the technology, you still have to drill a hole into the tree and attach a tap but the days of metal buckets hanging on individual taps are long gone. Commercial operations use vacuum tubing to pull sap out of trees, and even small sugar farms link multiple trees together with plastic tubing that feeds into vats. The sap then gets transported to the sugar shack, where the water content is boiled off and sweet syrup remains.
Chuck Fish shows where he had to repair a line where squirrels had eaten through as he taps along Asby Road in Loudon on Tuesday, February 17, 2026. Fish is retired but helps Sunnyside Maples owner Mike Moore with tapping, inspecting lines for breaks, and gathering the sap. 
Chuck Fish uses a mallet to insert a tap into a tree after drilling a hole an inch and a half as he taps along Asby Road in Loudon on Tuesday, February 17, 2026. Fish is retired but helps Sunnyside Maples owner Mike Moore with tapping, inspecting lines for breaks, and gathering the sap. 
Chuck Fish uses a drill to make a hole an inch and a half as he taps along Asby Road in Loudon on Tuesday, February 17, 2026. Fish is retired but helps Sunnyside Maples owner Mike Moore with tapping, inspecting lines for breaks, and gathering the sap. 
Chuck Fish attaches the vacuum hose to the releaser that holds the sap as he taps along Asby Road in Loudon on Tuesday, February 17, 2026. Fish is retired but helps Sunnyside Maples owner Mike Moore with tapping, inspecting lines for breaks, and gathering the sap. 
Chuck Fish gets ready to use a drill to make a hole an inch and a half as he taps along Asby Road in Loudon on Tuesday, February 17, 2026. Fish is retired but helps Sunnyside Maples owner Mike Moore with tapping, inspecting lines for breaks, and gathering the sap.