Maple syrup season is an exciting time of the year here at Black Bird Management. It is the time of the year that we get to see all our hard work, over the year, come to fruition as the maple syrup is being made.
We started tapping our maple sugar bush at the start of January. We were able to add an extra 20,000 taps during the summer 2020 to our sap grid and therefore ended up with 103,000 taps this year. The weather was favourable and we were able to finish tapping the trees in mid February. Since the tapping was wrapped up a little earlier than we expected, we were able to get a head start on the expansion we had planned. We also spent this time finding leaks in our system to make sure we collect as much sap as possible during the season.
The 2021 maple syrup season was a short one for us. We got our first flow of sap on March 1, 2021 and our last flow on April 10, 2021. Although the season was short, we were still able to produce approx. 3.18 lbs of syrup per tap. We sure got to test the design of our system this year! We had 810,000 L of sap come in on our highest flow day. Thank goodness our system was well designed and we were able to handle all the sap that came in that day!
Our syrup production went quite smoothly as we made some changes in our process to increase efficiency. We tried out different packaging this year; the 1000L totes pictured below. They are lightweight and environmentally conscious as they can be recycled. We made 112,000 L of syrup and packaged most of it into the totes, as well as putting some into stainless barrels.
We are quite pleased with our production this year and are looking forward to the 2022 season with an expanded sap grid and other facility improvements.
Keep an eye out for our next blog post detailing our 2021 sap grid expansion and other upgrades.
Until next time, take care.