PUTNEY, Vt. -- After an unseasonably mild New England winter, Vermont residents have been speculating for months about how the weather would affect the state's famed maple sugaring season.
Don Harlow, a bubbly man who has produced maple syrup for 63 years at Harlow's Sugarhouse in Putney, is not one of them.
''If you've ever sugared, you know you don't predict a season till it's over," said Harlow, 73, a third-generation sugar maker. ''Abnormal sugaring is normal sugaring."
After the unusually warm winter -- the National Weather Service says Burlington's average winter temperature of 25 degrees was the 10th-warmest on record -- sugar makers are wondering what's in store for them. For many, last year's crop was disappointing because of the weather.
''Who knows what exactly this season will bring?" said Tim Wilmot, a researcher at the University of Vermont's Proctor Maple Research Center. ''It's always been somewhat unpredictable, but I think it's probably more unpredictable than ever."
The best sap flow comes after nights that dip below freezing, followed by sunny days that rapidly warm the thick maple trees, causing the sap to ''run like a brook," as Harlow puts it.
But Tim Perkins, director of the center, said, ''Sometimes it runs like a brook, sometimes it just kind of dribbles."
Perkins said no one knows what effect the relatively warm weather will have on syrup production. ''We don't have a clue," he said.
Tradition tells sugar makers not to tap until Town Meeting Day, the first Tuesday in March. But during a warm spell in late January and early February, some of them got antsy, tapping earlier than ever. Then the weather turned cold for weeks, and some complained of a slow sap run; a few said there was an off-tasting syrup early on. Others say this year's syrup has a low sugar content, which means it takes more to produce a gallon of syrup. But that has nothing to do with the taste, which Harlow described as ''fantastic."
''The flavor's just terrific," he said. ''It's one of those vintage years."
Even for those sugar makers who waited a bit longer to tap, like Butternut Mountain Farm in Johnson, it has been an unusual season. ''We tapped the earliest we've ever tapped," said Emma Marvin, the owners' daughter. ''We boiled the earliest we've ever boiled."
Paul Greco, owner of Two Old Saps Sugar Works in Lincoln, said that instead of wearing snowshoes to tap the trees while standing on several feet of snow, as he had in past years, this year he carried a pail to put on the bare ground to stand on to place the spouts.
STICKY SITUATION ALL OVER See a video on how maple syrup is produced on explorenewengland.com.