Article by Bronwyn Boyer / Photography by Andy Zeltkains

 After the deep freeze of a long Muskoka winter, the return of spring is a relief for the senses. The warmth of the sun, the sounds of melting snow and bird songs, and the smell of the earth thawing out, all stir feelings of new beginnings.

For maple syrup producers, these welcome changes signal the arrival of something even more delicious, and for many, their livelihood – the sweet, liquid amber of sustenance and delight. In Muskoka, maple syrup has long been one of the hottest commodities. Tapping trees is one of the oldest traditions in Muskoka, first practiced by First Nations communities. And after tasting locally produced, farm-to-table syrup, nothing else compares. If spring had a taste, it would certainly be maple syrup.

The Muskoka Maple Trail and Maple Festival celebrates the season in style. By collaborating with producers and businesses to incorporate local maple syrup into various culinary delights, sugarbush tours, and other experiences, there is a lot to discover. Now in its seventh year, the Maple Trail kicks off March 8 and lasts until April 26. Then on April 27, the Maple Festival will be the grand finale. For the day of the festival, Huntsville’s main street will be full of maple syrup vendors offering various tasty maple treats, arts and crafts vendors, live music, maple beer, street performers, and all kinds of other surprises. 

Although the concept of making maple syrup is simple, modern developments mean there is increasingly more to learn about the craft, as new equipment and techniques emerge for greater and higher quality yields. Over the last 40 years or so, a pipeline system of 3/16-inch to 5/16-inch diameter rubber tubing has been a game-changer for sap collection.

Paul Sullivan of High Falls Woodlot in Bracebridge knows from experience how difficult it is to collect from buckets, as he and his wife Pam started their small operation in 2020 without a pipeline.

“The pipeline makes the process much faster and easier,” Sullivan explains. “With buckets, you can only collect a few trees’ worth of sap at a time. To make a small amount of syrup takes about 40 trees, so that’s a lot of traipsing back and forth through the bush.”

Now that they have 250 trees connected to a pipeline, Sullivan says expansion is a fairly simple matter of adding more lines. “Off the main pipeline, we have lateral lines that reach out like a spider’s web from tree to tree,” Sullivan explains. “Once the lines are set up, you can just leave them in place. There is some maintenance involved in preparation for the season, as sections get chewed by squirrels or taken down by deer and you have to replace them.” 

The size of a maple farm ranges anywhere from 1,000 to 18,000 trees. While larger producers use vacuum pumps to harvest sap, Sullivan uses the smaller 3/16-inch line that creates its own vacuum to gently draw sap out of the trees naturally with the flow of gravity. “For a small operation like us, it’s more cost effective, and we get a higher sap flow with less trees,” he says.

Another difference with operation size is wood heat versus natural gas. Propane is much more effective to boil large volumes of sap, but for a smaller producer, it’s too costly. Luckily since Sullivan has a sawmill, they have plenty of cut offs and scraps to fuel their evaporator. Wood heat means more preparation though, as it means securing at least 12 cords of seasoned wood that will burn hot.

Julian Montpetit of Barmont Maple Farm in Huntsville doesn’t miss the old days of bucket collection either. “I started making maple syrup on our family farm as a young boy, and I’m now 74,” he says. “We had up to 100 buckets back then that we’d collect with a skidoo and big tub on a sleigh. Then sometime in the 90s we got the pipelines put in. We’re a small family business, so we still use wood fire for our evaporator, but for everything else, it’s pipes and pumps. We don’t have electricity in our sugar house, so we rely on a generator.”

Now with 1,000 trees being tapped at Barmont Farm, the sap is vacuumed from the lines into holding tanks and then pumped into the evaporator. From there it’s pumped into a reverse osmosis (RO) machine for the rest of the process.

“The RO machine takes half the water out right away which cuts wood consumption and boiling time in half,” Montpetit explains. “Basically, the high-pressure electric pump runs it through a membrane that just speeds the filtering process up. We make about 800 litres a year on average. We’ve done better some years, but that’s what we shoot for.”

From sap collection to bottling, the process takes about six weeks for the family of five. Bottling is an arduous task, but many hands make light work.

After that, both Sullivan and Montpetit quickly sell out of their product through word of mouth from family and friends. Barmont Farm has also been a vendor at the maple festival each year, and they sell out there too.

“It’s a lot of fun,” says Montpetit. “We’ve done extremely well at the festival, even when the weather is unpredictable. I’ve stood out there in the wind, the rain, the snow, and the sunshine. My niece Collette likes to make maple sugar and maple butter as well, which has been a big success. It’s a wonderful celebration because it’s springtime and everybody’s in a good mood.”

One of the stops featured on the Maple Trail is Back of Beyond Equine Centre in Huntsville, which offers horse drawn wagon rides through a forest trail. “It’s a really neat opportunity for people to experience an old-fashioned sugar bush,” says Cathy Foyston, founder of the centre. “The early settlers would have used horses to collect their sap, so it’s like a step back in time. We don’t make maple syrup because we’re so close to Sugarbush Maple Farm, but we have taps and buckets along the trail so people can see what it would have looked like and see them filling up.” At the end of the ride, there is a campfire with hot chocolate and roasted marshmallows.

Everyone gets a bottle of maple syrup from either Sugarbush Hill Maple Farm or Maple Bluff Farm, to sweeten up their hot chocolate or just take home. The trail rides are private, but they have various wagon sizes for either a couple or a large group.

“We get quite a few people out,” Foyston says. “It’s a great activity for all ages, particularly for older people to get out and enjoy nature with their families.” After the ride, people can stay as long they like at the campfire or visit the horses and other animals at the centre.

The Maple Trail and Festival initiative is a partnership between Muskoka Tourism and the Huntsville/Lake of Bays Chamber of Commerce. The Trail is curated by the former, while the latter handles the festival. Val Hamilton, executive director of Muskoka Tourism, is excited about the possibilities for adding more local businesses to the Trail.

“The idea is to drive people to the area over a longer period than just a weekend,” Hamilton explains. “We have about 30 stops across Muskoka. Operators really enjoy participating in it because it drives business to them at a time that was typically seen as the off-season.”

Maple syrup is the feature of the Trail but there are a variety of drinks, dining and experiences across the entire region.

“I also think it’s a great event for locals,” Hamilton adds. “Even though it’s meant as a tourism draw, we also encourage local residents to come out and experience the maple harvest. I think sometimes people forget what’s in their own backyard.”