The Maplewood Farm

Maple Syrup

Today we visited a Maple Syrup Farm here in Nova Scotia. This was a new experience for us, as we knew very little about the processes.

Freezing nights and warm days are needed to induce the sap to flow in the maple tree.

Traditionally,  a maple tree was tapped through the bark  then the sap was collected in a bucket.

In larger scale production, this method  has been superseded by continuous plastic pipelines.

Some trees have more than one tap.

All these blue lines, join into a wider black line and send the sap down to a tank in a shed.

I was surprised to see that the sap is clear like water.

A tanker then takes the sap to the sugar house.

Where it is boiled up in an evaporator till it reaches the correct density.

This evaporator was heated by wood.

Here the temperature is reaching 104 C.

Some of the syrup is made into fudge.

And of course made into maple leaf shapes.

The maple syrup is bottled and stacked on the shelves.

We sampled the wonderful fudge and came home with some maple syrup and maple butter.

This was a great day out and  a place we will definitely visit again.

This isn’t a great video, but it shows the evaporator at work. I’ll have to try harder with future videos!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQsfsYZqybs