“It’s one of those things where you can’t wait for it to start, but by the end, it’s time to be done,” said Kyla Stacey as she summed up the sugar season.
This year got off to a late start, with colder-than-usual temperatures and unpredictable forecasts at Maple Rock Farms in Sainte-Clotilde-de-Chateauguay. “We weren’t exactly sure what the season was going to be,” said Stacey, who admits it was starting to look a little grim.
“Then the sap started to really run on March 16,” said Aaron Stacey, who runs the farm with his father Bryan. “It was unreal,” he said, noting they collected over 17,000 gallons of sap in 24 hours from a single bush with 4,500 taps. “We had to pick and choose where we went, because nothing comes to our shanty. We have to haul it all,” he recounted, noting they have 20,000 taps of their own, and custom boil sap collected from an additional 22,000 taps for other producers. “We started boiling at eight o’ clock in the morning and we boiled right through till four-thirty the next morning.”
Their systems are all automated, with sensors installed throughout their different maple stands, on their vacuums, and on every tank. All can be monitored on a single screen from inside the shanty. “I’m not sure how we would do it without this,” he said.
For an odd year, the overall average yield is impressive, with most bushes producing between 4.75 and 6 pounds per tap, with sugar content that remained consistent at around 2 per cent. Stacey said they wound up with around 14,500 gallons, or 420 drums.
“We started off the year with a little bit of dark syrup in the beginning, but then it cleared up to a nice amber,” he said, noting the taste was very good.
The Staceys built their sugar business from the ground up. They constructed their first shanty in 1996 and began boiling the following year, collecting sap by the bucket. They upgraded their equipment over time, progressing from a 2×4 pan to a 5×14 Lightning evaporator, before eventually moving to a high-efficiency wood evaporator. These changes coincided with the installation of pipelines and vacuum systems, which replaced around 3,000 buckets. They have also upgraded their reverse osmosis systems several times and adopted more modern tools, like a brix reader for calibrating the syrup and a pan washer for cleaning.
For the Staceys, maple syrup production has always been a family affair. Now, Aaron’s daughters Elizabeth and Ella are becoming more involved with collecting sap, cleaning equipment, and canning. The children tap their own trees and make use of some of old buckets for a taste of the old traditions while benefitting from more modern practices.
The family continues their work in the kitchen once the evaporator cools down, where they process fresh syrup into numerous products including maple butter, sugar cones, various sauces, and granulated maple sugar, which they sell from a small boutique inside the shanty.