Across New England, climate change threatens maple sugaring – one of the region’s oldest and most beloved traditions – and the families, flavors, and memories that come with it.
On a cold March morning at Clark’s Sugar House in Langdon, New Hampshire – across the Connecticut River from Vermont – the last grip of winter lingers outside. Bare trees stretch across the hills and patches of snow still cling to the ground. Inside the sugar house, it’s different. The smell of caramelizing sap drifts through the air as it slowly turns to syrup, the way it has for generations of Clarks.
David Clark, 67, is the fourth generation of his family to make syrup on this land. His great-grandfather first tapped these woods in 1893. David taps more than 4,000 trees each season, while his sister Marcia helps run the operation and carries on their mother Nancy’s famous pecan pie recipe – made with their own syrup.
“Every time I go out in the woods, I keep thinking about how my grandfather and his brothers and my father and all my relatives have worked this land,” David said.
Climate change is shortening the freeze-thaw window that maple sugaring depends on – threatening the families, forests, and traditions that have defined the region for generations. Photo: Adilson González.
This is sugaring season – a brief window when freezing nights and warm days create the pressure that sends sap up and down through the veins of maple trees. It’s one of the ways spring announces itself in New England, year after year.
But that window is shrinking. Climate change is making winters warmer and more unpredictable, disrupting the freeze-thaw rhythm that maple sugaring relies on. Seasons start earlier, end sooner, or stall altogether. Families who have built businesses, traditions, and community gathering places around sugaring are seeing the change in real time – and they’re raising the alarm about what New England stands to lose.
That freeze-thaw rhythm is why maple syrup production is concentrated in what’s known as the Maple Belt – a narrow band of hardwood forest stretching from the Midwest through New England and into southeastern Canada. It’s one of the few places on Earth where the trees and weather conditions reliably align to make sugaring possible.
Sugar maples need cold nights and warm days – a rhythm that exists in only one narrow band of forest known as the Maple Belt. Climate change is shrinking it and pushing it north.
The Clarks are one of countless New England families whose livelihoods depend on that geography. That history is visible inside the sugar house: old family photos line the walls, and seven trophy cups for best syrup in the state sit atop the evaporator.
The sugar house is much more than a workplace. Families come for maple cotton candy. Couples share maple cappuccinos. First-time visitors take syrup shots straight from the tap. It’s all of that – the family, the visitors, the rhythm of a season that arrives the same way every spring – that the Clarks aren’t willing to lose. It’s why they haven’t wasted time sounding the alarm.
Clark siblings Marcia, David, and Bruce inside Clark’s Sugar House, a family-run gathering place built around generations of maple sugaring tradition. Photo: Courtesy of the Clark family.
Warnings that Echo across Generations
In 2009, David’s father, the late Alvin Clark, sat for an interview about what he was seeing in the woods. The maples, he said, didn’t look as healthy as they did in the 1940s and ‘50s. That winter, the ground in Langdon “never froze,” Alvin recalled.
“I just hope that we can continue on our lifestyle as we have in the past in future generations,” Alvin said.
When David’s grandfather Leroy ran this sugar farm, the sap was sweeter and the seasons longer. Family records show a climate today’s Clarks no longer recognize. Photo: Courtesy of Clark family.
Nearly two decades later, his children are experiencing those warnings firsthand. David has watched winters change over the decades – less consistent cold, less snow, and more midwinter thaws that arrive early or linger too long. He’s also seeing changes in the trees themselves.
“The maple trees have been dying a lot sooner,” he said. “They’re not getting as big as they used to get.”
Marcia remembers when the seasons were longer and steadier. “The season would stretch from January through the end of April,” she said. Now the window is a fraction of that. “Dave was lucky he got out there in February,” she added, “and he’ll probably be done in just a couple of weeks.”
Even fall foliage – the bright canopy that draws millions of visitors and signals healthy trees – is fading. “You don’t really see tons of those bright, bright colors anymore in the maple trees,” Marcia said.
Alvin Clark grew up in these woods and spent a lifetime sugaring them. He watched the maples change, and he didn’t hesitate to sound the alarm. Photo: Courtesy of Clark family.
Across the Maple Belt, Sugarmakers Share the Same Concerns
What the Clarks describe plays out across the region – and the whiplash hits producers hardest. A blizzard one week, a warm spell the next. Planning labor, equipment, and open house weekends becomes harder when winter no longer follows the rules it used to. But it isn’t only winter. Summer droughts have left sugar producers uncertain whether their trees have stored enough sap to sustain the next season.
“What’s at stake here isn’t just a season on a calendar,” said Scott Sanderson, director of CLF’s Food & Farm Initiative. “It’s the families, the forests, and a tradition that has shaped this region for generations. Warming winters are pulling all of it apart.”
Every generation of Clarks has adapted to keep sugaring alive. Today, that means vacuum tubing and reverse osmosis to pull enough sap from a shorter, warmer season. Photo: Adilson González.
Adapting to Climate Change
Inside the sugar house, David displays a spile collection on the wall – the small spouts tapped into trees to draw sap. Some are wooden, hand-carved by his great-grandfather more than a century ago. Others are modern stainless steel that connect to vacuum tubing systems. The collection tells the story of how families have adapted, generation by generation, to new conditions.
Like many producers today, David uses technology that earlier generations didn’t have – and didn’t need. Vacuum tubing, used by roughly 83% of producers, helps collect sap more efficiently during the brief periods when temperatures are just right. Reverse osmosis, used by 38% of sugarmakers, can remove water from sap before boiling. It’s a workaround for sap that has grown thinner as a result of warmer winters, drought, and erratic seasons.
For David, this technology isn’t just innovation – it’s a required response, a way of keeping the tradition alive as climate gets harder to predict. He uses it because the woods are no longer giving what they used to.
“My grandfather kept records,” he said. “The sap they were pulling a half a century ago had way more sugar in it than what we’re getting now. They didn’t need any of this equipment. They just boiled it.”
But no amount of vacuum tubing matters if the woods themselves disappear. That’s why, years ago, David placed the entire property – in the Clark family since 1893 – into a conservation easement. That way, even if the land someday passes out of the family’s hands, the woods that make sugaring possible stay. The tradition has a place to keep happening.
For David, that decision wasn’t about business. “It’s even hard to make a profit with the maple syrup,” he said, “but we just keep doing it.”
David watches the color and consistency to know when the syrup is ready – knowledge passed down through four generations. Climate change is quietly making that craft harder to hold on to. Photo: Adilson González.
Deep Roots: A Tradition Older than New England
The Clarks steward a tradition that stretches back centuries – long before sugar houses, metal taps or even the idea of New England itself.
Across northeastern North America, First Nations – including the Abenaki, Wabanaki Confederacy, Iroquois Confederacy, and Anishinaabe – developed sophisticated ways of harvesting maple sap and transforming it into sugar. They made V-shaped incisions in the bark, collected sap in birch bark containers, then concentrated it either by boiling it with heated stones or by freezing it overnight and skimming off the ice, which removed some of the water. The goal was maple sugar, not syrup – practical to store, carry, or trade year-round. Fresh sap, called sweet water, was also consumed directly as a rehydrating, mineral-rich drink after long winters.
Indigenous sugaring is alive across the Northeast today. The Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation produces maple syrup at its tribal forest in Barton, Vermont. There, sugaring remains a time for community gathering, language practice, and stewardship alongside modern tools. The work sustains both culture and connection to the land, even as the climate that makes the season possible grows less reliable.
Fresh from the tap, maple sap has the texture of water. For centuries it has been a source of nutrition, hydration, and community for the people of this land, long before New England itself had a name. Photo: Adilson González.
The Path to Saving Our Winters
Maple sugaring is one tradition on a longer list of winter traditions under pressure – from snow sports to frost-dependent crops to the seasonal rhythms that agricultural communities rely on.
“From blueberry fields to apple orchards and cranberry bogs, New England farmers are feeling the squeeze of winters that no longer follow the old rules,” said CLF’s Sanderson. “Warmer winters and sharp temperature swings can disrupt the winter chill many of these crops depend on, wake plants too early, and make pest and disease harder to manage. Protecting our winters means protecting all of it.”
That’s why CLF is working to cut climate pollution at its source and to make sure fossil fuel polluters help pay for the damage they’ve caused. CLF is also pushing New England’s transition to clean energy and stronger climate laws that protect the people and places that define this region.
Four generations of Clarks have made syrup inside this sugar house – a workplace, a gathering spot, and a piece of New England that warming winters are putting at risk. Photo: Adilson González.
Holding on to the Sweetness
Outside the sugar house, the cold air settles in again. Sap continues to boil. The smell of warm maple clings to winter coats, drifting out into the woods as visitors line up for sweets, marking another season together.
David has dealt with his share of health setbacks in recent years. But you wouldn’t know it watching him keep moving through the sugar bush – checking lines, stoking the fire, walking visitors through the operation with the pride of someone showing their own home. There’s a stubbornness in him that defies his age and everything his body has been through.
This is what keeps him going: Every season is a way to carry his father, his mother, the generations before them forward into another year. Every visitor at the tap is someone new he gets to share that with.
The Clarks aren’t just making syrup. They’re keeping memories alive – and holding the door open for anyone who wants to step inside and taste the world they’ve built.
