The big story in The Boston Globe today is:

"Experiments at the University of Vermont’s Proctor Maple Research Center show that maple sap — the raw material that sugar makers boil into syrup — can be efficiently vacuumed from the decapitated trunks of saplings, sharply increasing syrup production. That’s a radical departure from the centuries-old practice of inserting a small tap a few feet above the base of a mature tree, relying on the force of gravity and internal pressure to draw off the sap.''

There's goes the romance of March-thaw  maple-sugaring, albeit there will be a windfall for industrial agriculture in the North Country. The baby maples would be grown in tight rows, like corn or Christmas trees.

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