Maple Syrup Time

Spring has sprung here in Nova Scotia. Crocuses are in bloom and the other garden plants are starting to leaf and bud. And for the Maple trees – the sap is starting to run. Yes, it is maple syrup time here in the Maritimes.

Easter Saturday, along with a group from work, Jim and I visited a sugarbush near the appropriately named town of Maplewood. Under a perfect blue sky we climbed aboard the wagon for our tour. This is a multigenerational property, and now the head is Rex.

“With all this land, I could sell this place for a lot of money,” he explained, “but I want to give it to my son the way my father gave it to me. Problem is – I don’t know if he really wants it.”

The wagon ride lasted about two hours. Rex would stop at a feature and explain some part of the process. Maple season only lasts a few weeks and starts when the days are warming up and the night are still cold (ideally from ten below to ten above). The sap flows just below the outer layer of bark in the ‘sapwood’ and this is where the sugar makers want to tap. The taps (holes) aren’t big – less that half an inch deep and not much bigger than a pencil. We watched Rex drill into a tree and place an old fashioned spike. It took less than a minute before the clear sweet liquid sap began slowly dripping into the bucket.

Bucket tapping is the traditional romantic way to tap trees but nowadays the sugarbush is a web of bright blue plastic hoses. They connect up like capillaries and veins in the body, and dump into big plastic tanks instead of the heart. (A tree can produce up to a gallon of sap per day – but often only about ½ of that.) These lines need to be cleaned, sterilised and maintained for the short production period. Someone has to ‘walk the lines’ at least five times a season. Rex has over twenty kilometres of hose.

“I’ll never again complain that Maple Syrup is too expensive,” I told Jim.

Each tank has to be emptied daily. The sap is then taken to a building known as a ‘Sugar Shack’. Basically the sap is boiled, and boiled and boiled – till evaporation makes syrup out of it - 45 litres of sap to make 1 litre of syrup. This process takes place in an evaporator – and Rex’s is brand new. It cost $20,000. “Sometimes I put more money into this than the wife would like,” he stated. This new stainless steel evaporator is fired by wood, and someone has to sit with it and feed the fire every five minutes or so to keep it at the appropriate temperature.

Last year Rex’s surgarbush produced about 150 gallons of syrup in total and each gallon netted $60. “I’m not in it for the money – that’s for sure,” he told us.

All of the world’s commercial maple syrup is produced in North America. 80% of that production is from Canada. Of Canada’s production 90% is from Quebec where it is not unusual for a producer to have 100,000 taps. Rex is fairly big by Nova Scotia standards and has 2,300.

“About 20 years ago I had a survey done (on my land) and was told ‘you fellas have a Sugarbush back there’. I jumped right in and started with a hundred trees.” He laughed. “I thought I was a big sugarmaker.”

The final treat visiting this sugar shack was their fresh Maple toffee. The syrup boiled again to make toffee and this hot liquid is poured over clean snow to set. Popsicle sticks are given out and are used to wind up the sticky maple delicacy. It was a perfect end to a great day.