2011 Maple Bush Updates

Wednesday – April 13, 2011

It’s all over but the crying! Well… the cleanup actually. We boiled for the last time in 2011 by pulling an all-nighter on Saturday and finishing up Sunday about when everyone was headed off to church. We had a major breakdown of our RO machine on Thursday evening and had to get a new pump delivered from Trois Rivieres . By the time it was up and running on Saturday around lunch we had tanks running over and over 6,000 gallons of sap to process!

When all the numbers were totaled up it was a record year for us! We gathered more sap, made more total syrup and more syrup per tap than we ever have in our history. The quality of the syrup produced was excellent all season and we will have light, medium and amber grades of syrup for sale throughout the year.

Over the coming 2 weekends we’ll wash up the almost 90,000 feet of tubing and mainlines and get all the tanks and other equipment cleaned and put away until next year.

We’ll be at the Perth Festival of the Maples on April 30 so drop by our sugar shack on Gore Street opposite Perth Restaurant to try a sample of our syrup, maple butter, maple jelly or maple mustard.

Tuesday - April 5, 2011

The sap is still running in our sugar bush and we have started to make amber syrup - the darker, richer tasting syrup that many of you have been waiting for! We had a good weekend and made 1,000L of syrup from Friday to Sunday. We had a lot of visitors through the camp to see and smell the syrup boiling. We are hoping the season continues through the weekend and with any luck we may have a record season! It's not too late to bring your family to the sugar camp this year, go for a wagon ride and learn about the art of making maple syrup.

Wednesday – March 30, 2011

We are in the middle of our season and so far things are going well. We tapped most of our bush on March 5 and 6 with the help of a number of friends. Our first boil was on March 13 and by March 21 we had made 50% of our crop for the season – in 10 days! Thankfully, we got a week of cold weather and were able to rest a bit and prepare for this week’s monsoon sap flows!!! The sap ran well yesterday and today and should run well the rest of the week and through the weekend. If you get a chance, come for a visit on the weekend. We typically gather sap and boil in the afternoon as we normally do maintenance in the woods and sugar camp in the mornings. To date, we have a good supply of light and medium syrup and we should have amber available within the next week. Get your orders in and we’ll make sure you get your fresh syrup ASAP.

Thursday - January 13, 2011

We hope everyone had a great Holiday Season and your 2011 is going well. We have updated the website (a lot of new pictures on our photo page) and the Winter 2011 Newsletter has been published on this page.

We have been very active in the sugar bush lately trying to get ready for the upcoming season. Several miles of new tubing has been stretched in the sugar bush; the evaporator wood has been cut, split and piled and we're still making minor improvements here and there. Historically, we need to be ready to tap either the 1st or 2nd week of March. So much to do, so little time!