13 WTHR IndianapolisMild Winter a Sweet Surprise for Maple Syrup

While most of us are enjoying this mild winter, it's been a cause for concern for one of Indiana's sweetest exports.
  
Maple syrup festivals are in full swing, and producers are keeping close tabs on the temperatures.
  
At the Rutherford Sugar Camp in Henry County, steam billows out of smoke stacks, as syrup season is in full swing.
   
Inside modest cook houses, are the vats and pumps that produce some of Indiana's sweetest export.
   
One one of four properties just north of New Castle,  tubes wind through the woods--connecting 18-hundred sugar and black maple trees to siphon out the sap that will become one of Indiana's sweetest exports.
    
The trees tapped about two weeks ahead of schedule.      
    
And owner Dave Hamilton smiles because "I'm having a great year".
    
It wasn't expected to be this way.
    
Hamilton, who is the vice president for the National Maple Growers Association, admits he and the one hundred other maple syrup producers in Indiana feared a mild winter would mean a mediocre harvest.

"Since the ground wasn't frozen this year at all ," Hamilton says, "we were concerned about the sugar content."  When it comes to collecting sap from the trees, Hamilton says "if it gets in the 60's we're in danger because the trees will bud."
    
But he says the freezing temperatures overnight followed by thawing temperatures in the day, make for ideal maple syrup producing conditions.
    
So he's able to siphon sap sooner; and keep up with the high demand for his home-made syrup as long as the weather holds.
    
Since it takes 43 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup every drip counts.
    
For Hamilton, "if it's a bad year I have to buy syrup to take care of the orders.  I don't have to do that this year."
    
The Rutherford Sugar Camp has been in business more than a hundred years.
    
And they still rely on mother nature.
    
This year, despite concerns to the contrary, her sweet nature will mean more Indiana maple syrup to savor.

Parke County Maple Syrup Fair