The sweetest season

The County’s first harvest of the year in full swing

A string of cool nights and relatively warm days have given County maple syrup producers a good start to the season, and almost all of the sugarbushes have had at least one boildown from sweet sap to decadent syrup. However, this year again, in the interest of community safety, the Maple in the County celebration of all things sweet in the springtime has been cancelled. Ron Hubbs of Sweetwater Cabin was disappointed the annual festival was again cancelled, but understands that the need for the community to remain safe during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic was more important. The participating producers of Maple in the County met via Zoom in late January and decided as a group that this year’s festival would not go ahead. “We decided it wasn’t safe to bring people into the County for this event,” he said. “The group really felt that County people in particular have always supported us, and this year they needed us to support them and do everything we could to keep this virus out of the County.” All of the sugarbushes will be producing maple syrup, and County residents can get their sweet fix either by curbside pick-up or through various retail outlets. A few producers will be offering COVID-safe onsite activities as well. A two-kilometre walking trail through the maple woods at Sugarbush Vineyards will be open on weekends during March, as a fundraiser for the Storehouse foodbank. It’s an easy walk, with maple trivia questions hanging on the trees for some added fun. Visitors are being asked for a $2 donation per person or a non-perishable food item, and there will be hot chocolate and cookies for all walkers.

Brad Brummell has been making maple syrup at his family farm near Cherry Valley since 1985, continuing the tradition from his uncle, his dad and his grandfather.

Despite the cancellation of last year’s festival, Hubbs said that maple syrup sales have been very good, and he has just a handful of smaller sized bottles left over from last year’s product. “County people, and people from Belleville and Trenton, have decided they’re going to shop local and support local, and that’s been a real boost for us. We didn’t expect that, and we expected sales to drop off, but sales have been good all through the year, and it’s been shop-local that has made the difference.” One of the regrets he has is that he and his wife, Janice, did not make their usual maple candy products last year. “This year we are going to go ahead and make some, because we had a lot of people ask last year. We’ll probably make a thousand or twelve hundred pieces, and if we run out we can always make more,” he said.

The business of actually making maple syrup requires a lot of work. The equipment must be kept spotlessly clean. Many of the moderate- and large-size operations collect the sap through a network of vacuum tubing. “The main work is in the tubing,” said Hubbs, who estimates that he has about eight kilometres of tubing in his sugarbush. “Squirrels like to chew on the tubing, we have wild turkeys that will cut it in two with their beaks, coyotes like to chew on it, and the deer will chew on it to. You don’t want any vacuum leaks in your tubing, so most of the work is in the woods, taking out chew marks where you think you might get air leaks.” He added that windstorms and fallen branches can also cause the tubing to break or become punctured. He said he spends quite a bit of time in the woods listening for air leaks. Last year, he added a reverse osmosis unit to his system. This resulted in a 50 per cent reduction in boil time and fuel usage in his woodfired evaporator. “It really lowers your carbon footprint, and that’s important today that we look at those kinds of things.”

Brad Brummell of Brummell Family Farm also makes maple syrup every spring. His family-run business is one of many that complement the larger County maple syrup producers. His family has been making syrup for three generations now. He uses a gravity-fed system of tubing to collect sap in 45- gallon drums. These drums are pumped out to a tank on a tractor and the sap is boiled down in one of two small wood-fired evaporators in the barn. It’s a task that involves the whole family. “Mum and Dad do all the boiling, and they’re back there to put up the lines and do the tapping,” said Brummell. “My wife and I do all the filtering and bottling, and taking them wherever they need to go to sell.” Their maple syrup is available at the farm gate as well as at Penny’s Pantry in Picton and the Curious Goat farm stand in Milford. Brummell said that making maple syrup is a lot of work, but it is fun do so, and it also gives him something to do before the start of the farming and crop-growing season.

For a number of years now, the Maple in the County festival has also been a fundraiser for the Back the Build campaign to raise money for the Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital Foundation. With pancake breakfasts being out of the question, the group has come up with a new idea. “We know how much people love maple and how much they missed it last year, so we’ve come up with Maple in the County to-go bags. We’ve tried to incorporate what people love about Maple in the County. There’ll be a bottle of syrup, pancake mix, goodies from local businesses, and there’ll be some activities,” said Michelle Nyman. “There’s a limited supply of these bags—125 of them at $40 apiece, and we will be donating 100 per cent of the proceeds to Back the Build.” The bags can be ordered online from mapleinthecounty.ca, and pick-up can be arranged at a number of County locations on March 27 and March 28. Continuing to support the hospital is very important for Nyman, who said that a number of family members of the various maple syrup producers also work in the healthcare sector. “The hospital has affected the lives of everyone, and we have nurses in the group who have worked so hard, and the pandemic has made people more aware of the importance of our hospital.