Bill's Place

Sunday, 3 April, saw us on the road to Bill's farm. Bill and his wife, Jeanette, had exchanged to NSW, near Bulahdelah, in 2008. We had met both Bill and Jeanette at our first Canadian League Educational Exchange (CLEE) meeting in Toronto back in January and again at an Ottawa CLEE meeting here in Ottawa.

Bill had been telling us he lived on a farm about 120km out of Ottawa and was going to bring back into production a maple tree block on his farm to produce maple syrup. His father and grandfather had produced maple syrup, but it had been 40 years since any syrup had been produced on the farm, except for a small volume for personal use. Much to Jeanette's chagrin, as she had to boil it down on the stove in the kitchen.

Bill had invited us to come out to the farm, so we said to Bill, when you get the maple syrup going let us know and we will come down and help out. So Bill rings, "Hey, the sap is running come any time."

It was great to be travelling out and about on country roads again. Even given the time of year it was quite a picturesque drive. For all you Aussies, you have to imagine at this time of year the trees have no leaves and the grass is last years grass and dead. The new green shoots are only starting to emerge where the snow has completely melted and it gets the benefit of the warming spring sun. But the country side is still pretty. Undulating country with well vegetated rocky outcrops interspersed with productive arable flats. I am not sure of all the tree species but they included deciduous maple, black oak, poplar, birch and the evergreen pine and spruce.

We arrive at the farm without missing a turn, thanks to the new Garmin GPS we bought. These things are an essential item of travelling kit over here. Just about everybody has got one and they are reasonably cheap if you keep eye your open for the specials. We were followed in by Bill's son Chris, and daughter Tara. Chris also had two chocolate Labs with him. We are seeing a lot of chocolate Labs over here, they appear to be a popular choice. These Canadians can't be all bad, eh!! :) We discovered Labs are Labs wherever you are on the planet as their characteristics were uncanningly like our Milo back in Aus.

Jeanette met us at the door and it wasn't long before we were seated at the kitchen table eating some home made pizza. It was then a short walk down to the sugar shack where Bill was busy boiling down the mornings collection of maple sap. Travis, a neighbouring farmer is helping Bill out for the season and Travis had his father there for the day also assisting.

Bill is virtually chained to the sugar shack once the evaporation process starts. Constantly checking the evaporators to ensure there is enough heat, stoking the fires as necessary, making sure it doesn't boil over, decanting syrup of the right consistency and straining the sugar sand from the final product and bottling as required. The maple tree carries a small amount of very fine sand up the trunk as it draws the rich sap up from the roots . This has to be filtered out before bottling. The sand is that fine you could not feel the grit when rubbing it between your finger tips. Evidently, it is very good for the complexion.

The process is a continual flow with a balance tank of fresh sap continually feeding the evaporators from one end and the reduced syrup being decanted at the other end. The evaporation rate is approximately 40 litres of sap to one litre of syrup.

We jumped on the collection cart and it was out into the maple forest to collect the clear watery sap that would soon be transformed into the sweet amber liquid so well known as a truly Canadian commodity. The sap was running freely and the buckets hanging on the trees were anywhere from quarter to three quarters full. On the one loop, where we helped in the collection, we collected about 100-120 gallons (?) in one hour. According to Bill, the majority of the maple syrup produced comes from the Quebec Province with some coming from Ontario.

What a great afternoon we had, helping collect the sap (probably slowing them down in reality) , getting in the way while stoking the fires, talking to Bill and Jeanette and getting a really good insight into the intricacies of maple syrup production that are not really well explained in the commercial and tourist sugar farms. We had a great talk to Bills father Ken, who was about 8 when his father started making maple syrup at the same sugar shack back in 1932. In those days they had about 2500 to 3000 trees tapped, this year Bill had about 1100. It was also nice to meet Bill's son Chris and Travis and his dad.

We headed home toward Ottawa just on dark and saw many white tail deer in the paddocks along side the road. Thankfully, none decided to try and share the road with us. The trip home seemed only half as far as getting there as we chatted about the day and pointed out the deer in the fading twilight. It seemed no time at all and we were passing the Scotia Bank Centre (where the Ottawa Senators play ice hockey) and onto the 417 Highway through Ottawa. This time not taking an off-ramp I didn't intend to take! But that is a story for another day!