Maple syrup producers assess damage from ice storm

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January 8, 2009

By Suzanne Laurent

Two local maple syrup producers lost some of their older sugar maple trees during the December ice storm but fared a lot better than their fellow producers a little farther north and to the west.

Hank Peterson of Londonderry, who owns and runs Peterson's Sugar House, said that he lost a few big trees on Peabody Row.

"I haven't checked all of the trees we have up at Mack's Orchards," he said. "I'm sure we've lost some branches."

Peterson said that if a tree loses 25 percent of its branches from the top, the sap will go up to the broken branches to repair them and cannot be tapped.

"I'm guessing that I'll have a 10 to 15 percent loss of trees this year," he said. "But I know what I was getting into in this business; otherwise, I would have been working at a desk job somewhere."

Peterson averages about 125 gallons of syrup every spring.

Barbara Lassonde, a publicist with the New Hampshire Maple Producers Association, said that syrup producers in the towns of Lyndeborough and Temple suffered a lot of tree damage during the storm.

"They seemed to be hit the hardest," she said.

"It will be hard to tell about the production for the state until the spring. Other towns that had serious damage were Alstead and Acworth. The smaller maples in Jaffrey were also badly damaged."

Chester maple syrup producer Brian Folsom had 500 taps around town last year.

"I lost one huge old tree that was about 150 to 175 years old," Folsom said.

"About one fifth of the trees I tap had severe damage, and I won't stress them further by tapping them this year."

The area's apple orchards seemed to fare better.

"I didn't see any tree damage," said Wayland Elwood of Elwood Orchards, which has 250 acres of trees in the western part of Londonderry.

Likewise, Phil Ferdinando, co-owner of J&F Farms in Derry, said his peach trees seemed all right after the storm.

"There's damage to the other trees around the fields," he said. "But the fruit trees are pruned every year, so there are not a lot of extra branches to get broken off when there are storms like the one we just had."