By CRAIG FREILICH

Maple producers in St. Lawrence County are anticipating having their operations going soon as the weather seems to be moving toward prime time for collecting sap runs and boiling the juice down to syrup.

Temperatures in all of St. Lawrence County could be climbing above freezing on Sunday after being in the teens Saturday night, then drop down below freezing Sunday night before rising to around 40 on Monday, if the National Weather Service forecast is right. That might be enough to get the sap moving for taps to draw some off. After that, it could get too warm for a good sap run.

“Things all froze up pretty good,” late last month, said Donald Finen, who is hoping to collect some sap soon at his Fine-n-Dandy sugarbush in Norwood. He noted that some maplers he knows did get some during a brief warmer spell. “I’ve been getting ready, putting the taps in the trees.” He uses the vacuum line method of sap collection on the roughly 1,000 trees he taps.

Jeff Jenness of the Orebed Sugar Shack in DeKalb said “I’ve been pulling branches off the lines” and checking them in preparation for gathering in the sap. He’s hoping for a good amount of sap this spring.

He said he has about 1,000 taps in 1,400 to 1,500 maples. “Most have just one tap, but the larger ones might have two or three.”

“The last couple of years were not the best” for the maple operation he and his wife Lori run.

He said he knew of “a couple people who got started” taking advantage of a warmer day or two with sap flow last month south of DeKalb.

He and Lori “have all the pictures and awards washed and wiped down” in preparation for the two Maple Weekends this year. The annual maple weekends offer visitors a chance to see a real maple operation at work, and give the producers an opportunity to offer samples and make some sales.

“They can see how we change sap with 2 percent sugar to syrup with 66 percent sugar. Education and customer satisfaction are what’s important,” Jenness said.

The maple weekends organized by state tourism promoters this year are not the usual two weekends in a row because of Easter, which will be between the March 19 and 20 and the April 2 and 3 maple weekend dates, but Jenness says Orebed will be open those weekends and Easter weekend, too, with demonstrations, samples, sales, and horse-drawn wagon rides into the sugarbush.

Several members of the St. Lawrence County maple producers are inviting people to see their operations. You can see which ones plan to be open to visitors at http://www.slcmaple.com/maple-info/maple-weekend, a page on the St. Lawrence County Maple Producers’ web site.