Maple syrup season is late due to unseasonably cold days, but the recent rise in temperatures is giving producers some hope.

"The sap flowed a little bit today," said Lew Steckler, secretary of the Northwest Pennsylvania Maple Syrup Producers Association.

Sugaring season, he said, depends on days like the recent sunny ones we've had in the region. High temperatures in the mid-40s and nights not far below freezing are perfect.

Mr. Steckler said it's too soon to know whether this will be a shortened or just a delayed season. The season lasts, on average, about five weeks.

"So far, we're so far behind it's unbelievable," said Callie Steckler, whose husband works as an independent producer at a 190-acre farm in Erie County. "They dropped the maple sugar tour back a week [to March 20-21] so people might have more product."

During a recent maple sugaring demonstration in North Park, naturalist Meg Scanlon kept an audience of mostly elementary-school age children rapt as she described the whimsical process of what she called "the special water inside a tree."

At one point, she held up a clear plastic cup with an inch of what looked like water.

"Is that actually real sap?" one boy asked.

Sap is clear and flows up from the roots with the ultimate intention of helping the tree bud, Ms. Scanlon said. Nights below freezing make it plunge back down. Each day that warms to above freezing sends the sap back up. Strong sunshine speeds the flow.

Once extracted, she said, the sap takes eight hours to boil into maple sugar and about 45 gallons to make one gallon of syrup. The sap goes from clear to the color of green tea to the color of ale to dark brown.

Ms. Scanlon compared the price and contents of a typical bottle of supermarket syrup to a similar-sized bottle of pure maple syrup. She said the concoction of water, corn syrup, imitation maple flavoring and other ingredients "costs about $1.50." A bottle of pure maple syrup, which must be refrigerated after opening, costs about $20, she said.

She also showed her audience how to identify a maple and gave them a tree anatomy lesson, explaining that the hole you drill must be only two inches so you don't hurt the layers beyond the xylem.

With a group of children around her, she let one boy drill into a tree along the muddy driveway at the nature center. Several trees were already collecting sap into plastic milk jugs hanging from nails. At an outdoor wood-stove, where a pan of syrup was ready, each participant got a plastic spoon and a taste.

"It was great," said Charlie Alt, a Cub Scout from McCandless.

"He thinks we have a maple tree," said his mother, Laureen Alt, "so we're going to go home and try it."

Upcoming events include the Boyce Park Maple Sugaring Festival Saturday from 11 a.m. to noon; 1 to 2 p.m. at the Boyce Park Nature Center. For more information on the self-guided tour of "sugar shacks" March 20-21 in Erie and Crawford counties, call 814-796-3699 or visit www.pamaple.org.

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