How Maple Syrup is Made

It takes ALOT of wood to boil off all that water to make maple syrup. We start cutting and splitting the wood a year in advance so that it is nice and dry for the maple syrup season. We go through 2 to 3 cords of wood during the boiling season. A cord of wood is a stacked pile that is 4 feet wide, 8 feet log and 4 feet high. That's about 2100 pieces of wood!!!

We make sure to stack and dry the wood through the summer. Dry wood burns faster and hotter so more energy is used to boiled the maple syrup. It also prevents creosote build up so the sugar shack doesn't burn down (always a good thing)

When the weather is above freezing during the day and below freezing at night it's time to tap the trees. We currently tap about 120 trees. That is very small number compared to the commercial producers which would tap tens of thousands of trees. Instead of buckets we use hoses and gravity for the sap to flow down to the sugar shack.

The boiling process takes a long, long time. 40 litres of sap is needed to make 1 litre of maple syrup. We typically boil for 18 hours a day, constantly feeding the fire with more wood. With our large evaporator we bring it to the near syrup stage and finish it on the stove so we can control the heat. There is no comparison to slow boiled maple syrup over a fire.