Maple Syrup Odor question

[JohnS]

My dad has a small syrup operation on his place in the Central NY area. He runs it every couple of years to provide friends and family with free maple syrup. He is shutting down his operation for this year, for a odor issue. He indicates that some of the maple trees you can smell a distinct chemical type odor near them. This odor is in his 3rd and 4th batches for this year. He also indicates you can taste it as well. He called the local co-operative extenstion, and the only thoughts they had were some type of fungus on the trees.

This is occuring on trees that he has used for many years without any issues at all. He is a bit discouraged by this, and as one of the recipients of this syrup, I am deeply concerned as well /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif Has anyone else ever come across this in their syrup making experience? Has anyone else noticed this in the central NY area? Any ideas?

 

[RanchMan]

Is the area "Co-op Extension" the same as the Ag Extension agent?

 

[JohnS]

Thats the words my dad used. Not sure if they are the same or seperate. The guy he talked to, indicated some presentation on maple syrup was going to done in Vernon or Verona. Indicated that an expert would be there, and he could ask. Unfortunatly, my dad can't attend that meeting. I will probably talk to him this weekend. If I get anymore details, I'll post.

 

[sugarmaker]

John,

The Vermont braintrust is in the form of , the maple extension agent at UVM. You also could try UVM's <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.uvm.edu/~pmrc>Proctor Maple Research Center.

Dave

 

[JohnS]

Thanks Dave. I passed the links on to my dad. He doesn't search or scrape the net looking for these resources. Hopefully they could provide some clues to the problem.