ROCKPORT — This winter, the cold won't seem to let up. But that is not stopping Maine Maple Sunday from happening this weekend, and when the thaw does come the Maine Maple Producers Association is expecting good flows that will yield ample amounts of Maine maple syrup this year.

Maine Maple Sunday officially kicks off March 23, but many of the 88 participating sugarhouses across the state make it a weekend event and open up their operations both Saturday and Sunday. It's an opportunity to show the public how Maine maple syrup is made in sugarhouses big and small, most often using wood to boil the hard rock maple sap to 220 degrees Fahrenheit, which is when enough water has been boiled off/removed and it becomes maple syrup. There are opportunities to sample and taste syrup and learn about the different colors and flavors and the grading and classifying system producers use.

This year will likely provide an opportunity to explain in great detail how the weather plays a role in the flow of maple sap, and how producers extract, transport and store the liquid that can easily freeze at any of those points. Then there is all the information about the process of converting sap to syrup.

In the Midcoast, there are two locations in Knox County offering syrup samples and boiling demonstrations, among other things, and six in Waldo County. For those wanting a real adventure, Northwoods Nectar in Eagle Lake is the northernmost sugarhouse on the tour.

Not quite as far up the road in Arroostook County is Spring Break Maple and Honey, located in Smyrna Mills. It's owned by Kevin Brannen, vice president of the Maine Maple Producers Association.

For northern Maine maple syrup producers like Brannen, Maple Sunday usually always comes a little too soon in their season.

"We are challenged every year to be warm enough to have everything flowing by Maple Sunday," said Brannen. "So we get creative to entertain and educate folks that come out."

Brannen said some years everything works out, in terms of timing the flow with Maple Sunday, while other years "we are froze up."

"A few producers in the south of the state have made syrup while other have sap in tanks, froze up, that will allow it to keep until they can boil it off," said Brannen.

This year, Midcoast hobby maple syrup producers like Tom Cox, in Rockport, are getting a taste of what it's like to be a northern Maine maple syrup producer. Unless you’re a large enough maple syrup producer and can afford heated sap storage space, you’re at the mercy of Mother Nature. So far, Cox has only had one good boiling opportunity this season, which yielded just one 2-1/2-gallon batch.

"I have never had a year like this," said Cox. "In the past, we would have one or two mornings of freezing temperatures that kept us from boiling, but not like this year. And everybody is having the same problem."

Cox has had to be vigilant to keep his extractor and its pipes from freezing and cracking. Cox used to boil his sap outside, until he built a sugarhouse and got serious about his boiling equipment.

"I had a friend in Owls Head, a lobsterman, and I saw him and told him I was looking for a piece of stainless to build a new extractor. He took me around back of his garage and gave me a 5-foot by 10-foot piece he had had for about 10 years."

Cox, who used to be a teacher in Rockland, loaded it up in his truck and took it over to the Technical School and asked if they had the ability to cut and weld the steel.

"This was in 2005, and they told me they had just got a new computer welding system and that if I designed it, they would build it," said Cox. "And that's what we did."

This week, he has had to keep a small fire burning in the wood box of the extractor, adding a little wood every 12 hours or so to keep it the liquids in the pipes from freezing. And each year, Cox adds something new to automate the process a little further. Once the boiling starts, a constant flow of sap has to be gravity-fed into the pans for the whole operation to work right. One year they attached a big, round thermometer to the side to keep from having to stick a handheld thermometer in the boiling liquid. More recently, they installed a float system that automatically adjusts the flow of fresh sap into the pans of the evaporator.

"We don't have to constantly be opening and closing a valve, now that we have a float that does it for us when the level gets low," said Cox. Alongside the extractor is a well-worn, comfortable couch, for monitoring and overseeing the process. When everything is flowing smooth, the fire needs to be fed constantly and barrels of sap need to be dumped into the holding tank, which feeds the extractor.

Cox has a couple of friends that work with him to tap, collect and deliver the sap to his sugarhouse near Simonton Corner. They all also spend time "monitoring" the evaporation process, which is akin to waiting for a tip-up while ice fishing. Which means, there's various efforts to keep warm, properly nourished and well hydrated, all the while hoping for a good catch. Only in the case of boiling sap, the odds of winning gold are a little better in the sugarhouse.

According to the notes written on the walls of Cox's sugarhouse, last year's yield was 46-1/2 gallons. In 2012 they made 48 gallons and in 2011 they ended up with 64-3/4 gallons of maple syrup from the sap collected from about 400 tapped trees. And that's not sap that comes onto Cox's property via a labyrinth of white and blue plastic tubing strung amongst the trees surrounding his property. It's all collected in individual buckets and pails at 400 trees at three locations, and then collected into barrels and moved by tractor and truck by Cox and his neighbors, Skip Pound and Jim Annis, to Cox's sugarhouse.

But for the past week, Cox's operation has been stopped solid in its tracks — by frozen sap.

Outside of his sugarhouse, atop a 6-foot-tall pile of pallets, is a plastic storage container that holds 300 gallons of sap. On the ground is a smaller barrel of sap that will eventually be dumped into the container atop the pallets. Plastic tubing is connected to that container, and gravity delivers the sap into the extractor inside the sugarhouse through a hole in the wall.

"The sap is all frozen solid everywhere, and in the buckets at the trees too," said Cox. "But I'm hoping that by Wednesday, with highs in the 30s, we will be able to start picking up loads of sap, not ice. And that what we have on hand will begin to thaw back into liquid.”

Up in Arroostook County Tuesday, Brannen was also eyeing the weather forecast.

"I would rather have extended cold than extended heat, to be honest," said Brannen. "But Thursday looks like we might get the warmup we need and this season, I expect some good flows. We had a cold winter and the trees have stored a lot of good sugar, so when it starts really flowing, we should end up with a really good season.”

While the maple syrup producers around Maine await the thaw, there should be enough maple syrup for tasting Sunday, and lots of things to do, see and learn at the sugarhouses listed below participating in the MMPA’s Maine Maple Sunday. For a statewide list and map of participating sugarhouses, click here or click on the .pdf link above.

Knox County

Conway House
Route 1, Rockport
March 23, 1-4 p.m.
Web: www.conwayhouse.org/conway/Welcome.html

Sparky's Moody Mountain Maple
130 High St.
Hope
831-5085
March 23, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Boiling demonstrations, samples of syrup on waffles in the morning and on ice cream in the afternoon, sugarhouse tours and demonstrations. Handicapped accessible.

Riley School
73 Warrenton Road
Glen Cove (Rockport)
930-9995
March 23
Come and see how the children boil their sap as part of the school's science program. Live music, barbecue, crafts, native trail hikes and syrup tastings. Handicapped accessible.

Waldo County

Back Ridge Sugar House
107 Boston Road
Winterport
944-2575
March 23, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Evaporator demonstration, syrup over ice cream, syrup samples, snacks. Handicapped accessible.

Beaver Hill Plantation
130 Sibley Road
Freedom
382-6129 or 487-1445
March 22-23, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Wagon rides, live boiling and syrup making demonstration on a wood-fired evaporator, ice cream with maple syrup, homemade goodies, coffee and hot chocolate, sugarbush tours, selling maple syrup.

Kinney's Sugarhouse
200 Abbott Road
Knox
568-7576
March 22-23, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Woods and sugarhouse tours, equipment demonstrations, syrup tasting, live music Sunday at 2 p.m., farm tours, sugarbush tours. Handicapped accessible.

Simmons and Daughters Maple Syrup
261 Weymouth Road
Morrill
342-2444
March 23, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Wood-fired evaporator, free ice cream with maple syrup, farm tractors for kids to check out, door prizes and a raffle. Selling maple syrup, candy, whoopee pies, cotton candy and hotdogs cooked in sap.

Bradstreet Maple Farm
69 Peters Road
Searsmont
441-8801
March 23
Free samples, demonstrations, self-guided sugarbush tours, selling maple syrup and related products. Handicapped accessible.

Ducktrap Valley Maple Farm
153 Dickey Mill Road
Belmont
342-3179
March 22-23, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Sugarbush tours. Selling maple syrup and sugar, apples, wild Maine blueberry and pecan pies, maple holiday cakes, wild Maine blueberry maple syrup, maple apple butter, baked beans. Cross country skiing and snowshoeing, conditions permitting. Handicapped accessible.

Editorial Director Holly S. Edwards can be reached at hollyedwards@penbaypilot.com or 706-6655.