Spring is the best time for maple, its an active period, a memorable season! After the dormant winter, the "sugar season" returns …This is when the Quebec population revive their love for maple.

Taphole For the maple sap to run, we must tap the trees. At the first signs of spring, the maple producer prepares his instruments for this first activity of the sugar season. Each maple tree of 20 cm or more can be tapped. The larger trees can have an extra tap for each additional 20 cm, for a maximum of four (4) taps per tree. How is a tap done? With a drilling bit, an 11 mm hole is made in the trunk, the hole must not be over 6 cm deep. In the tree, the water circulates between the bark and this limit of 6 cm deep.

Gathering

Once tapped, the maple trees give out a sweet sap called "maple sap", this sap must be boiled rapidly to make a good syrup.

How is the sap gathered?

The sap is gathered in many ways, depending on the terrain, the available work force and the technologies that are used. The operation consists of gathering the sap from the tapped maple trees and to bring it to the sugar camp. At the beginning of the season, you need snowshoes that are well adapted to the snow to gather the maple sap.

Since the coming of tree-to-tree tubing, today used by 75% of the producers, the number of taps has shown a distinct progression. Maple groves of 10 000 to 15 000 taps are not rare, because the new technology makes the work easier and rises the quality of the products. One of them, the reverse osmosis, separates the sugar from the water, reducing the boiling time and economizing the fuel and the work. Tubing With the coming of tree-to-tree tubing, there is no longer a need to gather the maple sap by hand. No more need for buckets, barrels, horses or tractors, no need for a large work force! The maple sap flows directly from the tree to the storage vats due to a branched out network of small plastic tubes that links each spout to a vacuum system called "sysvac". It starts automatically as soon as the temperature is high enough for a flow. Nowadays, one man can take care of several thousand maple trees when before it took five or six.

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