TAPPING MAPLE TREES

The process of tapping a tree starts with choosing the right tree. First, it has to be a maple tree (hence the name maple syrup), and the tree must have a minimum diameter of 10 inches.

Once the tree is selected, a hole is drilled into it and a spile is tapped into the hole. A spile resembles the shape of a kazoo, narrow at both ends and fat in the middle. It also has a small lip at the end to allow the sap to drip out. A bucket is hung from the spile with the spiles opening dripping its contents into the bucket.

 

This process is what Ryan used for his first four years of maple syrup operations.

Phone: 519-786-4729
E-mail: Ryans.SweetMaple@gmail.com



Ryan's Sweet Maple
Ryan's Sweet Maple
Ryan's Sweet Maple
Ryan's Sweet Maple
Ryan's Sweet Maple
Ryan's Sweet Maple
Ryan's Sweet Maple
Ryan's Sweet Maple
Ryan's Sweet Maple
Ryan's Sweet Maple
Ryan's Sweet Maple
Ryan's Sweet Maple
Ryan's Sweet Maple
Ryan's Sweet Maple
Ryan's Sweet Maple
Ryan's Sweet Maple
Ryan's Sweet Maple
Ryan's Sweet Maple
Ryan's Sweet Maple
Ryan's Sweet Maple
Ryan's Sweet Maple
Ryan's Sweet Maple
Ryan's Sweet Maple
Ryan's Sweet Maple
producing farm fresh maple syrup
Vermont, Canada, Quebec, Ontario, Toronto, London, Forest Products of the sugar and black maple hardwood trees were well known to First Nations people of the Lawrence and Great Lakes areas before Europeans arrived. Other maples also produced the basic sap could be boiled into syrup, but, because the sugar content was much lower, they were used far less. Hence, maple syrup country was that where hard maples grew numerously: parts of present Maritimes, Southern Quebec and Ontario, upstate New York, New England, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The making of the syrup and sugar was and is a North American activity based primarily on the native deciduous forests spread broadly throughout eastern Canada. Early European venturers were delighted with the delicious, fragrant sweetness of maple syrup and sugar - for, until West Indian plantations made cane sugar widely available, they had mostly known only honey. In 1663 the English chemist, Robert Boyle, described sap collection as recorded in the accounts of Massachusetts settlers and, in 1673, French priests in New France similarly sent reports back home. Demonstrating a maple sugar bush and springtime sap gathering, this colourful lithograph, take from Thomas Conant's Upper Canada Sketches in the late 19th century, illustrates natives with local settlers from the back country gathering and preparing sap for maple sugar. Today the provice of Quebec supplies more than 50 percent of the world's supply of maple sugar [C.J. Humber Collection] The people of the First Nations had an age-old collecting technique. As the warming days of early spring brought sap rising in the maple woods, they cut a diagonal slash in each lower trunk and inserted a hollow reed through which the sap dripped into a small bark container. These were subsequently taken to bigger bark or log containers where fire-heated stones were dropped into them until the sap had boiled down to a dark, sweet syrup often referred to as "sweet water," especially when used in the cooking of venison. Further boiling produced maple sugar. European settlers basically kept to this pattern, merely replacing bark vessels with either wood or metal pails and large cast-iron kettles hung by chains over boiling fires. Indeed, for many subsequent generations throughout both French and English Canada, the "maple moon" month or the "sugaring off" period would remain a special occasion on the country calendar. Then, in the melting days and freezing nights from March into April (depending on local weather), rural families would gather at their shanties in the sugar bush to collect and boil the sap - and to make maple taffy or maple candy for young and old alike by pouring syrup with the consistency of melted wax out onto a clean, white snowbank. This 18th century engraving, one of the earliest known views depicting the making of maple sugar in Canada by aboriginals, is taken from Moeurs des Sauvages Ameriquains, compare'es aux moeurs des premier temps, published in Paris in 1724 by P. Lafitau [Royal Ontario Museum] Only around the 1940s did methods change. A modernized maple syrup industry introduced networks of plastic pipes leading from the trees to a central evaporating plant. Despite this, market demands exceeded supply, and prices soared. Today, especially in Southern Quebec and in eastern Ontario, maple syrup and maple sugar continue to add their flavour (literally) to a distinctive Canadian farm-and-bush industry.