Ronnie Moyers walked through a grove of sugar maples high in the Appalachian Mountains, trying to find somewhere to make what he called “Appalachian music.”
Moyers runs Laurel Fork Sapsuckers, his sugar camp in Highland County on the Virginia-West Virginia border.
On this warm afternoon in March, he found a suitable sugar maple to tap for the sap that is boiled to make maple syrup. Moyers drilled a hole into the tree and inserted a spile, or hollow metal tap, to release sap from the tree into a pail hung on the spile.On farms that still gather sap the old way, you can hear the pat-pat-pat of sap dripping into pails all around the grove, the cadence varying by tree, drumming out a sort of Appalachian rhythm.
But the tune went silent earlier than farmers west of the Blue Ridge hoped this spring. The sap from Virginia’s maples stopped running sooner than usual, cutting barrels of syrup produced — and profits — in half.
“Mother nature really messed with us,” said Tim Duff, whose sugar camp is a short drive from Moyers’ place.
Duff and many other producers said there have always been good and bad years for maple, and doubt that a warming planet is to blame.
But research shows the unseasonably high March temperatures that left Virginia farmers facing some of the worst maple sap yields in memory are being driven by climate change.
“It cannot get any worse than this.”
At the same time yields have fallen, expenses for syrup production have soared.
Tariff threats and foreign wars drove up prices on syrup barrels and other materials from Canada — a leader in the maple industry — and glass for bottles from Europe and elsewhere.
“If you're a small to mid-range farmer, one bad round of no syrup could put you in a bad place — that’s where diversification really matters,” said Kari Sponaugle, an agricultural agent with Virginia Tech who also farms in Highland County.
“It’s just a matter of playing your cards with how you can maximize your skillset.”
These Appalachian farmers have an ace up their sleeves this year: cattle. Low livestock numbers in the U.S. mean that farmers selling cattle are getting the highest prices they’ve seen in years, which could make up for some maple losses, Sponaugle said.
Lots of small- to mid-sized farms in this region start their farming season with maple syrup and transition into rearing cattle, sheep or poultry.
But farming is precarious. As the calendar marches through the calving season, Highland’s farmers are still contending with many of the same weather and cost concerns that dogged maple season.
A dry April brought severe drought conditions that make feeding and watering livestock and growing crops exceedingly difficult. All the while, gasoline prices have soared since the start of the war with Iran and fertilizer costs have multiplied as well.
The double hit is leaving many Virginia farmers worried about how they’ll endure the rest of 2026, despite a promising cattle market.
The taps run dry
Known by monikers such as “Virginia’s Switzerland” and “Virginia’s Sweet Spot,” Highland County is one of the southernmost regions of the U.S. where maple syrup production is possible.
Virginia is home to about 50 sugar camps. Highland hosts the largest concentration, with the rest mostly dotted across Southwest Virginia.
Since 1960, the Highland County Maple Festival has brought thousands to the small town of Monterey to celebrate the usual height of maple season in mid-March. Sugar camps sell syrup and show how sap is boiled in large vats, called maple pans, until its water evaporates and leaves behind the sweet syrup.
Bluegrass bands play and stands sell fresh maple donuts and crafts. The local Ruritan club fundraises with an all-you-can eat buckwheat pancake breakfast. Sponaugle, the extension agent, was once runner-up for the festival’s high school Maple Queen contest.
Held over two weekends, the festival is a major economic driver.
“Learning about maple syrup, purchasing maple syrup, that … helps our school system, the fire department, all the local civics,” said Missy Moyers-Jarrells, who runs Laurel Fork Sapsuckers with her father, Ronnie.
That financial bump was hurt by the short sap run this year. With camps producing half of what they had in previous years, some ran out of syrup before the festival’s second weekend.
Sugar maples can only be tapped for about four to six weeks and prefer a narrow range of temperatures — below freezing at night and above freezing during the day. Once the weather warms and trees bud, the flow is done.
A major ice storm this winter downed tree limbs and prevented many farmers from getting out to tap trees early. Then, temperatures in the 80s in March disrupted the freeze-thaw weather cycle and brought the season to an early end.
Global warming projections show that “by 2100, Virginia and Indiana will barely be able to produce any sap,” according to research from Dartmouth University. Across maple producing regions in Canada and the U.S., the season may also come a month earlier by the end of the century.
For now, weather patterns are inconsistent. Last year was actually a great season for syrup in Virginia, but overall, long-term trends indicate a warming planet. Global warming also paradoxically causes more severe winter storms, even though temperatures are rising.
The cost of doing business is high in an industry where most inputs are shipped from Canada, including plastic tubing that gathers sap from trees, syrup barrels and large evaporators that have replaced maple pans at many farms.
Fearing President Donald Trump’s tariffs would hit the maple industry, some farmers panic-bought Canadian syrup making supplies. Though the Canadian produced equipment ended up being exempt from the tariffs, that didn’t prevent fears amid ever-changing trade policies.
“When I first heard about the tariffs, I went ahead and ordered immediately, just in case that did happen,” Moyers-Jarrells said. “I had to spend early on equipment.”
It's just the latest shock sending costs up. “COVID — that’s when the price spiked,” Moyers-Jarrells said. “It is very hard to acquire supplies right now, as far as bottles, all the packaging stuff.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a major glassware producer, has also driven up the price of bottles used for maple syrup, wine and other goods. Russian forces destroyed a major glass factory in Ukraine, and European glass factories no longer have access to cheap Russian natural gas to power their furnaces.
“Glassware shot up in price about three years ago, ridiculously high,” Duff said. “Here in Virginia, that war affected us with glassware, which is weird, but it’s a big world.”
Cash cows and drought
Kevin Conner’s Mill Gap Farms in Highland had a record breaking year in 2025.
“We ended up with about 750 gallons last year, it was a great year for us, this year not so much — less than half of that number,” Conner said.
Besides the syrup trade, Mill Gap makes money from selling alpacas, cattle and beef, and renting out a bed-and-breakfast on the property with mountain and valley views.
In May, Conner considered how to get the most money from his cattle after the losses in maple. “We bought heifers — they were pricey, I will say that — and our goal is to breed them and get them sold in the fall,” Conner said.
Despite a down year for syrup, the farm could break some more records on cattle this year. A pregnant heifer is a hot commodity. U.S. cattle inventory is at a 75-year low, driving up prices. The high value of cattle has even led to livestock thefts in Virginia and other states.
“A heifer is probably going to cost you close to $2,500 to $3,000 a head,” said Doug Puffenbarger, a Highland County farmer. “Five years ago, you probably could have bought them for half.”
The dip in cattle supply is largely due to farmers selling off livestock because of the high cost of inputs and weather conditions that make it harder to graze animals. But Virginia’s number of cattle has remained steady for years, a major advantage for the state’s farmers.
After calving season, Virginia farmers get to work raising young cattle on grass and hay until they weigh enough for market. They fetch high prices selling to finisher states — areas in the U.S. grain belt where cattle can be robustly fed on cheap and plentiful corn, and other grains, before entering the food system.
That fattening process will be made harder this year by an ongoing two-year drought in Virginia. Highland and surrounding counties are currently under severe drought status, and it’s expensive to buy hay from out of state. Though cattle prices are currently favorable, the cost of raising a herd eats into profits, Puffenbarger said.
“Cattle is definitely way better than it was, but the problem with all that is everything is more expensive — the medicine has gone up, the fertilizer, fuel,” he said.
A good year depends on many factors, often not in a farmer’s control, Conner said.
“It’s going to be hard next year, when you look at it from a raw numbers perspective,” he said, “[But] God always provides, he gives you what you need when you need it.”