LENOX, Mass. - March is maple month, and farms across Berkshire County are starting to boil for maple sugar season.

What You Need To Know

  • March is maple month, and farms across Berkshire County are starting to boil for maple sugar season

  • At Mill Brook Sugar House, the process is just starting

  • You can visit the Sugar House.

  • This seasons maple syrup is already for sale.

At Mill Brook Sugar House, the process is just starting. They just started putting buckets out to collect sap on trees on Friday.

Now that the trees are starting to thaw, sap is starting to flow. Just this week, owners Bill and Elaine Markham brought in about 5,200 gallons of sap with the warmer weather.

“It ran overnight all-day Tuesday, all day Wednesday before it froze up again, so we had quite a bit of sap," Bill Markham said. "We still got a little over 1,800 gallons of sap to process. We’ll do that first thing tomorrow morning. Luckily it's nice and cold, and sap is keeping nice and fresh right now.”  

The Sugar House started to boil on Tuesday, a little later than last year. Sap collection is all about the weather, and even with the late start, the Markham’s don’t believe it’ll have an effect on their sap production for the month.

“We have no idea what the weather's going to do for the month of March," Bill said. "Even the best forecasts aren’t very accurate for more than three or four days out. As for temperatures, now they have projections of what they think it’s going to do but until it gets here, we don’t know. Historically though, it's usually around the first week of April we go to."

The Sugar House has about 1,300 spouts in their three different locations in Pittsfield, Lenox, and Richmond. Once sap is collected it gets boiled, filtered and packaged. 

Bill and Elaine have worked at the sugar house most of their life meeting new kinds of people every year. 

“That’s a legacy, and teaching the little kids all about it, teaching everybody, having them realize how much works goes into what they enjoy on their pancakes and their cocktails," Elaine said. "We like to explain that part, and it’s something to do with your kids growing up, creating memories - that’s what we like to do."

The Mill Brook Sugar House has been family-owned for decades and give tours for free, open seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.