The 2022 maple syrup season has come and gone! It was a very plentiful year with the right conditions for high maple syrup yields. Our single 2,000 acre sugar bush has continued to produce a very high quality of organic maple syrup.
We spent the summer and fall of 2021 expanding our sap collection grid and doing a few upgrades to our facility. We added approximately 22,000 taps, bringing the total to around 125,000 going into the 2022 syrup season. Due to the increased number of taps and therefore higher yields of sap, we added two stainless steel silos for increased storage capacity.
We started tapping the sugar bush in mid December 2021 and finished in early February 2022. After the tapping was complete, we spent time making sure our sap grid was as tight as possible to ensure our vacuum would be near perfect.
The sap started to flow a little later than normal this year but also ended a little later. Our first day of syrup production was March 19, 2022 and our last day was May 2, 2022.
We packaged the bulk of our syrup in 1,000 litre totes. The totes fit our production capacity well and take less time to fill than the stainless barrels. They also stack nicely in the warehouse and take up less room than the barrels. Another advantage to the totes is that they can be recycled after they are used and therefore do not need to be shipped back to us. This reduces cost and minimizes our impact on the environment.
Thank goodness we still had some stainless steel barrels on hand because with the incredible syrup year we had, our 160 totes were filled by April 19, 2022! We almost filled all our barrels too!
We ended our season feeling thankful for the bountiful harvest and for all the hard work our employees put in to making this season a great success!