Here is a look at Uncle Berwyn's Birch Syrup Camp.

 

 

Near end of March, we make our way to Syrup Camp, hauling equipment in by snowmobile.

 

 

Once in camp the work begins; Hauling buckets to the birch trees.

We burn alot of firewood making birch syrup. We must get all our wood to camp, bucked and split, before the sap starts running.

 

 

When the sap starts running, It's Tapping Day!

 

 

 Drill the hole. Insert the spout. Hang the bucket.

 

 

We harvest the sap from about 500 trees.

 

 

Note that the sap comes out clear. It is in the boiling process that the sap takes on the dark colour of Birch Syrup.

Every day we collect the sap from all 500 buckets.

Down at the Batch Plant (sugar shack) is the wood fired evaporator.

It is in this big boiler that the sap is rendered down to syrup.

 

 

Making syrup takes many hours. We boil deep into the night.

Boiling hot syrup! 

 

 

The hot syrup is put through a felt filter and sealed in buckets. In town we will bottle the syrup in a commercial kitchen.

After 11-21 days the sap stops running. Time to clean up camp and all those buckets!

 

 

Syrup Camp Crew 2007

Brook, David, Shea, Berwyn, Sylvia, Selwyn (not yet born) and Graham (not in picture)

 

 

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