SYRACUSE, N.Y.—Take it from the pros, tap the trees while they’re frozen, not when they’re running.

“I like to tap when the trees are cold,” said Mike Parker, of 100,000-tap Parker Maple Farm in West Chazy, N.Y. during the NYS Maple Conference last weekend. “When it’s warm, we’re chasing leaks.”

Parker was one of several sugarmakers interviewed by the Maple News who said that ice cold trees are the best conditions for tapping.

“The holes drill much cleaner,” said Raymond Gingerich, who taps 10,000 in Orwell, Ohio.

Both sugarmakers said that if a producer taps a tree and sap comes out of the hole, they’ve already missed a run. “You’re getting there too late,” Gingerich said.

Drills have been humming across the Maple Belt since the turn of the year, with sugarmakers tapping and many making syrup already.

Frozen trees have been a little hard to come by in the Northeast, with another mild January and even milder December.

Big producers in Northern Vermont, Northern New York and throughout the Northeast have been in a race to get holes drilled and make syrup during the mildness.

Glenn Goodrich, one of the biggest sugarmakers in the U.S. with 140,000-taps in Eden, Vt. told The Maple News that he made his earliest syrup ever in his 45 year career.

“We boiled on Dec. 30 for the first time and I have never boiled in December before,” Goodrich said.

He made 2,000 gallons of Amber Rich after boiling again on Jan. 2. He started tapping on Dec. 5.

Goodrich too was another advocate for drilling trees when they are not running.

“In my grandfather’s time, you didn’t tap until the trees were running,” he said. “Now we like it when they’re frozen. Wood drills better when it’s solid.”

Morgan Arthur, an 18,000-tap producer in Rockburn, Que. agreed.

“Frozen trees are better,” he said.

Meanwhile, sugarmakers in the Northeast were busy this week cleaning up after high winds hit many operations.

“We had to break out the big chainsaws, not the baby ones,” said Wendy Chabot who sugars with Earl Cooley at 900-tap Bumpas Sugarhouse in Barre, Mass.

She told The Maple News that many hemlock trees fell on mainlines.

“We’re picking up a lot of branches,” she said on Thursday.