Three Small Maples

Friends helping friends get ahead

At 39 years old, Jon Nyman is a first generation maple syrup producer. But that doesn’t mean he is new to the game. Nyman got his taste for tapping at the age of eight when he visited his first sugarbush and was immediately hooked. He was in Grade 1. He came back from the sugar bush that day and hatched a plan to tap the handful of maples growing on his property with ice cream buckets hooked to nails. It was the start of something big. Jon’s first real full scale production started in 1995. The two previous years before that he had helped out a neighbour, who was a hobbyist maple producer.

Justin Williams watches over the labelling process as his fiancée, Keturah Breckon and her mother, Tracy Breckon, get the syrup ready for the store.

“He let us tap trees and every time we got a 45-gallon barrel full of sap, he would boil it for us and give us a gallon of syrup in exchange for helping out around his sugar shack. We’d stoke the fire, gather wood and collect sap. Now it’s come full circle because a friend of Michelle’s stepson lives on a farm on County Rd 10. He’s 12. He collects sap in ice cream buckets and brings it to us. We boil it and we give him the syrup,” says Nyman.

It’s a family-run business, with Nyman and his wife, Michelle, doing everything year-round to make the business run. What started out in 1995 with 40 taps has now turned into 5,300 taps including a new block of trees being plugged in this week. Michelle jokingly calls it a hobby that got way out of control.

Looking at the facility, the evaporator they use is somewhat smaller than what other sugarbushes of that size have, but Nyman explained why. It’s because their reverse osmosis system gives them the ability to separate the sugar from the water before it hits the evaporator, leaving a lot less liquid and more concentrated sugar water.

“It works the same as a household filtering system, except the household system keeps the clean water and throws away the bad stuff. In our case we keep the bad stuff because it has the sugar.”

This is a massive weekend for the couple, who like other maple producers in the area, rely on family and friends to help through the busy times. The Nymans usually have 10 to 15 people helping out for the Maple in the County weekend. The week leading up the big event had them hustling to get everything ship-shape for the throngs of visitors they will see on Saturday and Sunday. Highlights on the Nyman Farm will include their famous pork maple sausage on a bun, Jersey burgers and Jersey Tails, which is a County take on the Beaver Tail, but with granulated maple sugar. The barn will be open and full of friendly animals, and they will also host a vendor market. In a way to give back, the Nymans do a canned food drive annually called “load the loader”which goes directly to the Wellington Food Bank. The hours at the Nyman farm over the weekend will be 9 a.m. – 5 p.m., or “until the last person leaves and the lights are turned off,” says Michelle laughing. They will have all grades of maple syrup available as well as offering some education on the new grading system, which took effect as of January 2018. It’s a system that all Maple producers must adhere to. The grading is based on the percentage of light transmission, or simply, how much light shines through the sample of syrup. The light to dark ratio is directly related to how far you are into the season. The start of the season is where you’ll find the lightest grades, and it gets progressively darker as the weather warms.

Jon and Michelle Nyman outside their sugar shack in Prince Edward County.

Nyman is also known to help friends interested in the business of maple syrup and tapping trees. He has an open-door policy for his sugar shack. Prime examples are Justin Williams and Phil Roblin, both of whom Nyman has known for his entire life. These two, who are also best-friends, took him up on his generosity and wealth of knowledge on the syrup business and spent some time with Nyman learning the ropes. Since that time, both friends have become full-scale maple producers of their own. Justin Williams of Justin’s Maple Syrup is located just outside of Bloomfield on County Road 32. At 28 years old, he started his business and opened his sugar shack behind the family house in 2005, before he was legally allowed to drive.

“It worked out quite well. I didn’t need to drive anywhere. I would get home from school, collect sap, then go back in and do my homework,”says Williams.

Williams is up to 500 taps now, but he started with 20 taps in his first year. He and Phil Roblin ramped up the operation and started tapping more trees behind the Williams family house and had over 100 trees on pails. They then looked at the pipeline system and got it up to a 5-acre coverage before Roblin started out on his own and left Williams to do the same.

“Phil and I are still very close. In fact, he is the best man at my wedding this summer,’ says Williams.

The family aspect seems to be a common thread that runs through all of the County sugar shacks. Willam’s fiancée Keturah Breckon, and her mother, Tracy Breckon have been hard at work all week putting labels on syrup bottles to help Williams get his stock up for the big weekend. The couple plan to get married on the Williams property this summer.

Phil Roblin and his wife Brittany are the proprietors of Roblin Farms, which is quite a distance away from Nyman and Williams, but on a property equally as beautiful. Roblin’s was chosen to host the launch party for this year’s Maple in the County for their picturesque location. The Roblins have close to 1,100 taps and produce a variety of maple syrup grades using traditional methods combined with modern techniques. This weekend for Maple they will have pulled pork on a bun, maple butter on English muffin, as well as hot beverages.

This new generation of maple syrup producers are a tight knit bunch, and they seem to always be willing to share information with each other. There is no malicious nature to this business. It’s about helping friends when in need and making room for everyone to get ahead. It’s a new world way of thinking, put towards an old world industry, and it couldn’t be sweeter with friends helping friends.