In march break we vent to the Maple syrup festival at Bronte Creek Park. We like it and because it’s a tradition for us I would like to share my small experience about how maple syrup is made. Maple syrup is made from the sap of the maple tree, which has to be at least 40 years old to be collected. A maple tree must be 25 cm wide at chest level for the sap to be collected. Depending of the thickness of the maple tree it can have inserted up to 3 spidel.
After that we can drill about 6 cm deep hole then we will insert a metal spidel and a bucket is hung from the hook of this spile to catch the maple sap.
Aboriginal people were the first to discover how to turn the sap into the syrup. They poured the sap into a large hollow log and they threw heated rocks into the log to boil the sap . After 24 hours they obtain the syrup or sugar.
The early settlers reduce the process duration to 12 hours by using the 3 kettle method. This method involves hanging tree different sized iron kettles over a large fire. The sap was poured into the largest kettle and boiled until some of the water evaporate then the liquid was move into the medium kettle and the heat was reduced to prevent burning. To finish the syrup they used the smallest kettle to remove the water at the reduce heat to avoid burning .
Over the years people improve the process and the duration was reduced to 6-8 hours.
So much work for a sweet delicacies.
Adrian B 
Nice tradition. I like it… and the pictures.
Thank you Alex. It’s one of many canadian traditions that we abrace it.
A post from a true Canadian. Very informative for us, thank you for sharing 🙂
Shared this with my boy. =)
Thank you Diana. It is a nice tradition for us with a nice reword at the end (pancakes with maple syrup)