Jesse Nehring places a spile into a maple tree to collect sap as a part of his personal hobby of tapping neighborhood trees.
It is a chilly winter day when I see a young man slow his bike outside of my house, quickly peek around the yard, and walk up to my front porch. He waits there, seemingly trying to decide if he feels up for talking with a stranger today. Before he can knock, I open the front door to greet him. He introduces himself as Jesse Nehring and asks if he can tap one of the trees in my yard to collect sap for syrup production. I excitedly agree.
Over the next few weeks, Nehring monitors the weather, waiting for the perfect window. He is watching for a few days of below-freezing nights and above-freezing days. This temperature swing changes a tree’s internal pressure, causing sap to flow into the trunk. Bright, sunny days also allow the sap to flow more easily.
Four weeks later, I meet Nehring in my front yard as he lays out a few tools. He uses a drill to make a hole about an inch and a half deep, angled slightly upward. Then he inserts a spile (a metal spout), delicately tapping it into place with a mallet. At the end of the spile, he hangs a clean plastic bag to collect the sap.
Nehring is a sophomore at Montana State University studying business management, but spent most of his childhood in Wausau, Wisconsin. In the Midwest, small-scale syrup production is common due to a large density of sugar maples, the most prominent tree tapped for syrup.
Nehring recalls how “Every spring, usually around late March, we would tap these two or three trees that were in our yard and put buckets on them and let the sap flow, and then we’d cook the maple syrup in our backyard.”
While Nehring’s parents did most of the work back then, he was always peripherally involved. In 2020, when his family moved to Bozeman, his father’s hometown, syrup-making still piqued Nehring’s interest. His family’s property in Gallatin Gateway did not have maples, but there were syrup-producing trees in the area, so Nehring decided to meet his neighbors. Nehring describes how he drove around some rural roads, spotted birch trees, and knocked on doors. He asked them, “Hey, can I tap your birch tree next spring and see if I can make some syrup from it?” A lot of folks said yes.
When his family moved closer to town, he continued asking community members if he could set up taps on their maples. After collecting sap, which consists primarily of water, Nehring cooks down the liquid for several hours, reducing 40 to 50 gallons of sap down to one gallon of syrup. Nehring explains that “It has to have about a 60 to 70 percent sugar content. If it gets above that, then it can crystallize in the bottle. If it’s below that, then it’s still edible, it’s still syrup, it’s just not going to be quite the texture that you want.” Once the syrup is reduced, it is filtered and bottled. Nehring primarily uses the syrup for personal use, occasionally selling small bottles. Around the Gallatin Valley, Nehring finds that Norway and silver maples are the most productive sap producers.
Globally, according to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the United States produces around 25 percent of the world’s syrup, with the remaining 75 percent coming from Canada. Within the United States, around half of American production originates in Vermont, 14 percent from New York, and 10 percent from Maine. Here in Bozeman, only a few trees associated with maple production, box elders and Rocky Mountain maples, are native.
“ I would come home from school, and I’d check the buckets to see how much it was flowing. You could walk up and down the street, there’d be bags, and people would have tapping systems on all their trees in everybody’s yards. Making syrup was one of my favorite parts of the year.” —Jesse Nehring
Starting in the 1880s, newspapers documented shipments of a variety of non-native maples to the area. One article, titled “Maples in Montana,” published in 1888 in the Bozeman Weekly Chronicle, reported that, “Two years ago Mr. Louis Herbert, who lives six miles from Helena, in the Prickly Pear Valley, says the Independent, ordered some choice seeds from the great sugar district of Canada, from which he has successfully raised 800 healthy and vigorous maple trees, which are growing finely.”
Today, non-native Norway, sugar, silver, and red maples can be spotted around town. Tatarian, amur, and Japanese maples can grow in the area, but are shrub-like trees that are typically too small for tapping. Some maples, including sugar maples, struggle to thrive in the area due to their preference for acidic, well-draining soil and consistent moisture.
The sap and resulting syrup from each tree type have slightly different flavor profiles and nutrients, much like how different grapes can be processed into distinctive wines. Sugar maples have one of the highest sugar concentrations of any maple species, averaging 2 percent or higher, and offer a classic, rich syrup taste. Silver maple syrup has butterscotch and vanilla notes. Box elder syrup is typically slightly more bitter than other syrups and has a sorghum-like flavor.
Trees have been tapped for syrup for centuries, pre-dating colonization, primarily in Canada and the Northeastern United States. Native communities have long used syrup to cure meats, as an anesthetic, and in traditional medicines. Though less common, several Western Indigenous groups also practiced syrup-making and would mix the sugar with pieces of animal hides to produce candy.
In many places, syrup has historically been collected in containers made of birch bark and put through a series of freeze-thaw cycles to separate the water from the sugar. Sap was often poured into hollowed-out logs and heated stones were added to reduce the liquid. Sap was boiled down until pure maple sugar remained, which was then stored and used as an important food source throughout the year. Ceremonies are still held that celebrate the sanctity of maple trees and the gifts of the forest. Over the centuries, Indigenous communities passed down sap processing and forest stewardship practices to settlers.
Today, there are common standards that most syrup-makers follow. Harvesters look for healthy trees with trunks at least 10 inches in diameter. They use small holes, around 7/16-inch in diameter, and avoid previous tap holes and damaged bark. Trees should not be over-tapped, and the timing is important: When trees are tapped too early, it increases the chance of bark splitting. Tapping the tree above a root and in an area with significant sun exposure helps ensure sap will flow well. Equipment should be removed when sap stops flowing, and tap holes should be left open for the tree to heal. Some studies indicate that tapping trees decreases their growth rate. However, according to a study published in 2025 in the National Library of Medicine, if producers implement best practices, tapping has a negligible impact on tree health.
Nehring is not the first person in Montana to explore commercializing urban sugaring. In 2015, David Knudson tapped trees in his Missoula neighborhood. After being told that extracting sap from trees on city-owned property was against city code, Knudson thought creatively about how to pursue his newfound interest. He began forming relationships with neighbors and private homeowners around town who agreed to let him set up his equipment on their land. Over the years, he has formed long-standing relationships and now taps around 450 trees annually within Missoula city limits. Building his hobby into a business, Knudson now owns and operates Montana’s only commercially licensed maple syrup company, Montana MapleWorks.
While Knudson has the necessary equipment to collect and process sap from thousands of trees, accessing tree groupings, also known as sugarbushes, is his largest challenge. Tapping single trees in individual yards is often too time-consuming and logistically challenging, so his preference is to use trees that are in proximity. Norway maples tend to be his most reliable sap producers.
“Over the past decade, the length of the sap run has decreased,” he tells me. “The beginning of the season has always varied, but the number of days in the ideal freeze-thaw cycle has declined. Overall, it seems like silver maples have faced the greatest decline in health and production.”
These concerns reflect broader scientific studies and observations. Several studies show that sugar maple habitat is in decline, and modeling predicts habitat loss will continue as a result of climate change. A study from 2023 published in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change reported that most producers have experienced negative climate change impacts to their syrup operations.
Michael Farrell, leading syrup researcher and owner of Forest Farmers, a company based in Vermont that crafts unique syrups from maple, birch, walnut, beech, and rare tree species, tells me that water scarcity is the largest barrier to syrup production in the Intermountain West. Soil moisture levels have a direct impact on sap production, and as droughts become more commonplace, syrup production is negatively impacted. That said, some studies indicate that if maple tree management practices are adapted and trees are tapped earlier in the year, negative impacts to syrup production can be moderated.
Farrell and other researchers recognize the significant growth potential for syrup production in the Western U.S. “If you like maple trees, you should be encouraging people to tap them, because it makes them a cultural and economic mainstay of your community,” Farrell says.
Outside of the delicious treat maples offer, the genus provides benefits to other living creatures. They offer vital early-spring nectar for pollinators, sequester carbon, and stabilize soils. The trees create a dense canopy for birds, squirrels, and racoons to build nests. The seeds and sap are stable food sources for insects and small mammals.
For many locals around town, maples provide a quiet place to sit and relax in the shade during Bozeman’s hot summers and a beautiful visualization of the changing seasons during the fall. For Nehring and others, these trees hold sweet childhood memories.
“ I would come home from school, and I’d check the buckets to see how much it was flowing,” he says. “You could walk up and down the street, there’d be bags, and people would have tapping systems on all their trees in everybody’s yards. Making syrup was one of my favorite parts of the year.”
