Maple syrup is the annual spring harvest from the iconic maple trees in eastern Canada, and for the third year in a row, it is an early season.
The mild winter in the Atlantic province of Nova Scotia this year had the sap rising sooner than expected.
Heather Fraser runs the Moncton Maple Sugar Camp and credits the erratic weather and temperatures. (CBC)
Matthew Harrison of Hidden Mountain Maple Farms in Southampton, near Springfield, Nova Scotia, told the CBC they began tapping their trees on February 5th and finished on the 17th.
“This is the earliest I’ve ever tapped or had this much syrup before March,” he said, last Thursday, February 22nd.
“It looks like the sap will run on Saturday and Monday again, so we will be boiling both days.”
“From one minute it’s minus 10 and then the next it’s plus 10”
Scott Whitelaw said 2018 brought the earliest tapping since he and his wife Quita Gray bought Sugar Moon Farms, over 20 years ago.
Whitelaw was out in his woods last week drilling holes, installing the spigots and watching the sap flow through the pipes to the main collection point.
“We started tapping the earliest we ever have, just because of the way the weather has changed so much,” he told the CBC radio last week.
“The fellow that I bought the farm from used to start tapping at the beginning of March and hoped to be all ready to get the season underway in the middle of March,” Whitelaw said.
“Within a couple of years of us moving to the property, we realized we had to move it up a bit. I would start tapping around the end of February and now we’re looking at the middle of February.”
Unlike the province of Quebec, snow is in short supply in Nova Scotia this year, so these syrup producers had to use an ice-crusher to make the coveted treat, of syrup freezing on snow, or ice.
Children, and the young at heart, look forward to twisting a stick into, as it freezes, to have a maple lollipop to enjoy.
In the neighbouring province of New Brunswick, Heather Fraser told CBC, “It’s just the erratic change. From one minute it’s minus 10 and then the next it’s plus 10,” she said.
The red leaf at the centre of our flag, comes from the tree that provides the syrup that becomes the topping or ingredient in a lot of great meals.
Canada’s Indigenous people showed the settlers how to harvest the syrup as they moved into their camps in the bush to tap the trees and boil the syrup.
The fourth moon of the year in late March early April, was known as Izhkigamisegi Geezis, the boiling moon, to the Obijway people.
(With files from CBC)
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