It’s not just about the size of the tree
Quebec known for its sugar maple syrup sap
Drip, drip, drip — you can hear it throughout much of Ontario these days.
It’s the sound of sap dripping out of sugar maple trees and into metal buckets — although, some old school trees prefer wooden buckets.
Maple syrup time is one of the best things about the demise of winter in these parts, along with the return of blue jays, robins, tundra swans and other weather-sensitive birds.
Muskoka is saturated with sugar maple trees, so there’s a lot of sap running through the district during most of April. It requires 40 litres of sap to be boiled down to one litre of maple syrup and that happens at dozens of sugar shacks throughout bush country in the Muskokas.
Many of the sugar shacks enjoy performing in front of an audience and are open to public tours, including tours of the bush to watch the trees drip sap into buckets or into plastic tubes to flow down hill to the sugar shacks. Some of the sugar maple trees have been performing this spring ritual for 100 years or more.
Muskoka’s Maple Trail includes more than 30 different locations where maple products are on the menu. All details are at www.muskokamaple.ca
The trail leads to Muskoka’s Maple Festival, a free, familyfriendly event on Huntsville’s main street on April 21. There’s an all-day pancake breakfast, musical events and every food product you can think of made with maple syrup — including beer.
Four different microbreweries in Muskoka have combined their talents and their hardware to produce Pancake Breakfast Specialty Maple Ale. It’s only available on draft at Lake of Bays Brewing Company, Muskoka Brewery, Sawdust City Brewing Company and Clear Lake Brewing. Jordan Mulligan at Muskoka Tourism said the maple beer, where sap replaces the water, was supposed to be flowing by St. Patrick’s Day, but ideal spring conditions that get the sap flowing in the trees have been slow arriving in Muskoka this year. maple beer started flowing on April 1. The demand for the maple beer was so strong last spring that the four breweries have doubled their production this year.
Bill Statten and Cathy Foyston don’t boil sap into syrup on their 100-acre farm near Huntsville where they care for 19 rescued and retired horses at The Back of Beyond Equine Centre, but many people head to their spread to see the first step in making syrup. They hook up Duke and Phoenix, two big black Percherons, to an eight-person sleigh and head off into the bush to see the sap dripping into metal buckets. Foyston said there is still lots of snow on the ground in Muskoka “so we’re still using sleighs instead of rubber-tired wagons for the bush tours.”
Directly across Muskoka Rd. 10 from the horse sanctuary is Sugerbush Mill Maple Farm is a full-scale sugar shack where they tap 3,200 maple trees and boil the sap until its sweet maple syrup, which they mix with ice cream, plus pour it on fresh snow to make toffee.
About 80 per cent of the world’s supply of maple syrup comes from Quebec and although he taps only 1,000 trees Dany Nero has likely introduced maple syrup to the world more than any other Canadian.
His restaurant, Chez Dany, is located just off Highway 40 in Trois-Rivieres, Que. It’s the main highway between Montreal and Quebec City along which thousands of tour buses roll each week.
Last year, 2,100 of those buses pulled into Chez Dany so the passengers, usually from foreign lands, could experience a true Canadian lunch. For many of them it’s their fist introduction to maple syrup and they love it.
“We had customers from 80 different nations stop here last year,” said Nero. He had 200 buses stop in when he first opened Chez Dany 25 years ago.
Before opening Chez Dany Nero had called on tour companies in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Boston, etc. to let them know there is a new, interesting lunch counter opening along their tour bus routes.
The 1,000 maple trees being tapped just outside his 300-seat dining room is merely so visitors can see where it all begins. To feed 2,100 busloads of hungry foreigners, Nero turns to his cousin Christina who has 3,200 trees tapped on his farm near Trois-Rivieres.
Vernon Wheeler stands well over six feet, weighs 212 pounds and his big hands have spent years wrapped around axe handles. But, there are days when he feels like wrapping those strong hands around his arch enemy — the cutest little furry animal in the woods — the chipmunk.
Wheeler is one of Ontario’s largest maple syrup producers. More than 400 kilometres of plastic tubing carry sap down to his sugar shack from the 20,000 maple trees he has tapped this spring in his 730-acre bush near MacDonald’s Corners in Lanark County north of Kingston.
He talks a tough game, but Wheeler doesn’t hunt chipmunks.
He has lived in the bush more than 60 years and admits the little critters are a vital part of a healthy forest because of the seeds they spread. Besides, “they’re too doggone fast to hunt,” he said.
Despite his daily patching job, Wheeler and his family still produce enough maple syrup to serve hundreds of delicious pancake meals each day of the year to visitors at his large log cabin dining hall in the woods. At this time of year, the Wheelers will serve more than 1,000 diners on weekends.