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| (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
If you're a parent, you'll know that happiness is a sleeping child.
So, when our twin baby girls drifted off during what we thought would be a short drive to RIM Park on a sunny Easter Sunday, we decided to take the scenic route and let them sleep.
Our decision to shoot past the park and into the countryside was rewarded as we tooled along Sawmill Road and spotted a sign at the entrance to a driveway.
Maple Syrup, it read. Boiling Today.
As we drove past it, my Australian wife reminded me she had yet to visit a maple syrup production site in the nearly eight years she has lived in Canada.
Feeling I had shirked my national duty, I turned the car around and pointed it down the muddy lane into Sugarwoods, a syrup operation run by Alan Murray, with help from an amiable man named Rob.
Surprised as we were to find Al and Rob working on a holiday (and a Sunday, no less), we were thrilled when they warmly welcomed us into their sugar shack for a close-up look at how this quintessentially Canadian product is made.
As the girls snoozed in their car seats, we thoroughly enjoyed our crash course (more of a refresher for me) in syrupology. I used my trusty BlackBerry Q10 to capture all the images in this post.
Thanks to my friend Darin White,
the hardest working man in spare-time photo blogging, for inspiring me to carve out the time to post. Further thanks to the folks at
Foto:RE for getting us together for a critique/review session last week, where supremo shooter
Sean Puckett assuaged my smartphone insecurities by repeating the adage that the best camera is the one you've got.
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| Nothing says Canadiana like a sugar shack giving off steam and smoke during maple syrup season. (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
At Sugarwoods, we felt lucky enough for the personalized tour, but luckier still when Al and Rob told us this was likely the last day of production for their 2014 season. The long and exceptionally cold winter meant a later start, and thus a slightly later finish.
The end of the season is also when the syrup runs darker (and therefore richer in flavour) from the evaporator, as it was doing as we stepped inside the shack. Rob held a big white bucket as the dark nectar gushed from a tap.
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| Rob checks a temperature gauge after filling another bucket with fresh maple syrup, which boils at 219 degrees Fahrenheit, seven degrees above the boiling point of water. (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
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| Al demonstrates the use of a combination thermometer-hydrometer to measure the sugar concentration of freshly produced maple syrup. (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
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| Tenille gets set to down a shot of maple syrup fresh from the evaporator. If this doesn't lock up her Canadian citizenship, I don't know what will. (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
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| Al's price list didn't need much updating this year. (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
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| Fire roars inside the high-efficiency wood-burning furnace, fuelled by logs and pallets (skids). Fans below and behind the furnace provide plenty of oxygen to keep the flames dancing. (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
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| Rob stokes the fire. (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
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| An elaborate tubing system brings sap from about 800 maple trees on Al's property into the sugar shack. The lines remain in place year-round, filled with alcohol during the off season to prevent mould growth. (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
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| Distillate, produced when water vapour condenses during evaporation, spills from a hose. (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
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| Al runs one of his last batches of syrup of the 2014 season through a filtration system to remove sugar crystals from the finished product. (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
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| Filtering maple syrup (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
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| Fresh maple syrup, still hot from the evaporation process. (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
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| Rob keeps an eye on the high-tech systems that produce maple syrup at Al Murray's farm outside Kitchener-Waterloo. (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
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| Steam rises from the evaporator behind Rob. (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
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| Don't let the reference to Waterloo fool you - this sophisticated maple syrup production gear comes from Waterloo, Quebec. (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
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| Steam rises to the rafters of Al Murray's small sugar shack outside Kitchener-Waterloo. (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
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| Rob at the evaporator (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
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| A large chimney carries wood smoke out of the sugar shack. (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
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| Tenille checks out the Hurricane Force 5 wood furnace. (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
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| The Hurricane Force 5 wood furnace keeps the evaporator running and the maple syrup flowing. (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
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| The sap gathering tank sits atop a platform outside the sugar shack. (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
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| It takes about 40 litres of sap to produce a litre of maple syrup. (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
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| Rob approaches the wood pile outside the sugar shack. (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
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| Al enjoys a less-hectic moment inside the sugar shack. (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
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| Plastic sap buckets have replaced metal ones at many modern maple syrup operations. (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
We showed our thanks to Al and Rob for the personal tour by plunking down $16 for a litre of syrup. The bottle was hot in Tenille's hands; it was that fresh.
Can't wait to return once our girls are old enough to stay awake through the adventure.
Oh, and we did eventually make it to RIM Park for a wee walkabout.
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| The ladies. (Photo: Anthony Reinhart) |
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