The temperatures conducive to robust maple syrup production have been elusive this year. The conditions, which have been alternately too cold and too hot, have left southern Maine syrup producers with a significantly reduced crop this season, according to Lyle Merrifield, the president of the Maine Maple Producers Association.

“It was a poor season,” Merrifield said. “Most of the southern Maine producers produced between 60 and 85 percent of an average crop.”

Mark Cooper, the owner of Coopers Royal Heritage Farm in Windham, said he had fared even worse.

“We were a little better than 50 percent of last year,” Cooper said. “Southern Maine, most everybody, had a well-below-average year.”

“Definitely we weren’t happy with it,” Cooper added.

According to Cooper, the ideal temperature conditions for sap runs are 25 degrees at night, and 45 degrees during the day, with no wind.

Toward the beginning of the season, nighttime temperatures bottomed out below zero, while daytime temperatures stayed in the 20s. Cooper said that the typical production season begins in late February, and ends in early April. But due to the cold temperatures, Cooper said he started production in early March, kicked into high gear in late March and early April, and shut down the process in mid-April.

“It started way late, and it ended later than average,” he said.

Cooper said he achieved his highest production volume during the first week of April. But the sap runs began to slow as the nighttime temperatures moved into the 30s and 40s.

“At that point, the trees just weren’t producing anymore,” Cooper said. “We had some good days suitable for sap flow, but the trees were done. They didn’t run at all. There was no sap produced. The sap, right up until the very last day that it ran, was good and clear, nice quality sap, but when it stopped it completely shut off, which tells us the trees had reached, in their own metabolism, the shut-off point.”

While Cooper produced more than 200 gallons last season, he produced about 125 this year, he said.

“It was way too cold early in the season, and then when it did warm up, it warmed up fairly quick and stayed too warm. What ended our season was (that) the nighttime temperatures stayed too warm.”

“The first week of April was our best weather,” he said. “It was too cold before that and too warm after that.”

According to Merrifield, in northern Maine, maple syrup producers saw an average crop, due to more hospitable weather. In southern Maine, Cooper’s experience was more typical, Merrifield said.

“Everybody was in about the same boat,” Merrifield said. “It just stayed consistently cold too long.”

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