Visit elmiramaplesyrupfestival.comforfestivalupdates,information and more. Join us in Elmira at 7am on Saturday April 6, 2024
Festival chair offers a warm welcome to this year’s festivities.
Dear Maple Syrup Enthusiasts,
Welcome to the 60th Annual Elmira Maple Syrup Festival!
It is with immense pleasure and profound excitement that we extend our heartfelt invitation for you to join us in celebrating this monumental occasion. Six decades have passed since our humble beginnings, and yet the essence of our festival remains as sweet and enduring as ever. For sixty years, we have gathered to honour the timeless tradition and delectable bounty of maple syrup, weaving a tapestry of cherished memories and community spirit that de nes our vibrant Elmira.
As we stand on the threshold of this signi cant milestone, we are humbled by the collective e orts of countless individuals who have poured their passion and dedication into shaping the festival’s legacy. From the steadfast commitment of our volunteers to the unwavering dedication of our maple syrup producers, each contributor has played a pivotal role in the festival’s journey. It is with great pride that we announce Snyder Acres as the 60th festival’s “Producer of the Year,” a well-deserved recognition of their exceptional contributions to our maple syrup community. Be sure to visit Snyder Acres at the beginning of the Vendor mall and take home a piece of history with the limited edition Elmira Maple Syrup Festival Producer of the Year bottle, available for purchase at festival headquarters or
directly from the Snyder Acres booth.
Prepare your senses for an extraordinary experience unlike any other. From the tantalizing aroma of culinary delights wafting through our bustling vendor mall to the melodious strains of local musicians serenading the air, every moment promises to captivate and enchant. Venture into our newly expanded family fun area, where the maple ta y demonstration, Farm Discovery Area, and Kiddy Fun Track await your discovery. Embrace beloved festival traditions like indulging in u y pancakes at the Lion’s Hall, perusing the eclectic o erings of our vendor mall, and embarking on an enchanting Sugar Bush Tour. And don’t forget to explore the added allure of the Toy, Craft and Collectible Show, a delightful addition sure to spark joy and fascination.
In the spirit of renewal and excitement, we are thrilled to introduce our newest ambassador of merriment, “Amber,” our festival mascot who will spread joy and cheer throughout the event alongside Flapjack, embodying the warmth and spirit of Elmira’s Maple Syrup Festival.
To all our esteemed sponsors, we extend our deepest gratitude for your unwavering support and generosity, which have helped sustain and elevate our festival year after year. Your contributions are the bedrock upon which our celebration thrives, and we are profoundly grateful for your partnership in our shared endeavour.
As we gather to raise a glass (or perhaps, a maple syrup bottle!) to sixty years of cherished memories and countless moments yet to unfold, we welcome you with open arms to partake in the magic and camaraderie of the Elmira Maple Syrup Festival. Here’s to the past, present, and future of our beloved tradition!
Warm regards,
Matt Jessop
Committee Chairman
Volunteer-run fest introduces new expanded family fun zone, and extended toy show while celebrating community support and volunteerism.
While the 60th annual Elmira Maple Syrup Festival celebrates the tradition and the volunteers who have worked each year to make it happen, the organizing committee has also made several changes to the event.
The biggest change will see the committee take over the ta y demonstration started in 1965 by the McKee family, who were followed by the Optimist Club starting in 2001. The committee has moved the demonstration to the Kindred Credit Union parking lot and increased production so that festival visitors can watch the candy being made and then buy some to enjoy right after.
The committee has also partnered with Farm & Food Care Ontario to create an expanded family fun zone that will include several farm-themed demonstrations and a “farm discovery area” where kids can interact with animals. Finally, this year’s toy show will be held on both Friday and Saturday in conjunction with the craft and collectible show at EDSS.
Along with these changes, the committee has also been gearing up for the milestone event, said chair Matt Jessop, who is in his second year in that role.
“It’s a big deal really for us because we really value the community support that Elmira has for the festival, and to say that we’ve been around for 60 years is a pretty remarkable achievement for a solely volunteer-run organization. And really, an organization that wouldn’t be around if it wasn’t for community support,” said Jessop, who himself has been volunteering with the festival since he was eight.
While the 60th festival is a time to celebrate, what is being lauded is the volunteerism and countless hours that it gone in to make it work, Jessop said. It takes some 3,000 volunteers each year to make the world’s largest one-day maple syrup festival a success.
“We want to make sure that that is acknowledged, because, really, that same foundational principle is needed to continue success if we want to last into 70, 80, 90, 100 years, we need to continue to foster those community aspects so that people want to come out and enjoy the festivities,” Jessop added.
For the chair, a successful festival is more than just crowd size or the funds raised, which are then donated to di erent organizations in the community. Visitor satisfaction also plays a role.
‘It’s actually very rewarding and something that a lot of our committee looks forward to when a patron comes up to someone in a red coat and says, ‘This is the best year; I’m having a great time.’ I think that a lot of the committee really enjoys that aspect of things,” said Jessop.
The bittersweet legacy of Elmira’s Maple Syrup Festival’s visionary, Herb Ainsworth
Herb Ainsworth died six days before he could see his dream come true.
But the man who made the Elmira Maple Syrup Festival happen lives on in the memory of his niece Judy Biesinger, who is the last surviving sister of the town’s famous Duench triplets.
“My uncle and I were very close, so his death hit me very hard,” she explained at her farmhouse home near Dorking while surrounded by photographs and news clippings about him.
“We had only just buried him when the festival happened and it was just so sad that he never got to see it. So, it was quite an emotional thing for me to be at the very rst one in 1965.”
She said her uncle, a store owner who died from heart failure aged just 55, would never have believed the event would be so big after attracting 10,000 people in its rst outing.
“It just was mind-boggling, really, when we saw these people,” said the mother of three and grandmother to ve,
who has been married to Larry Biesinger for 58 years.
“I was 19 at the time and I’ll be 80 later this year, but at the time I had never seen anything like it.”
And Biesinger, whose father Carl Duench had married Ainsworth’s sister Ethel, wasn’t the only one who was surprised by the crowds.
“Nobody expected it to be so big,” she said. “At that time there weren’t quilts or anything else being sold, it was just all to do with maple syrup.
“There were these ladies cooking pancakes on camp stoves and you’d go up and get one on a plate, but there were so many people it wasn’t long before they ran out.”
Ainsworth, who was a member of the Elmira Board of Trade, came up with his big idea for the town after reading about similar festivals in the northern United States.
He persuaded Eldon Ho er, who would become secretary treasurer of the festival committee for the rst 17 years, that it was a good plan and interest steadily grew.
The two men and the other members of the board thought that it would be a good idea to spend a big sum on adver-
tising because this was the rst maple syrup festival in Ontario.
They spent $600 – worth more than $5,600 in today’s money – of their own cash on radio, TV and newspaper publicity.
After Ainsworth’s sudden death on April 4, 1965, there was an even greater determination to make the Apr. 10 event a success.
And so it has proved to be as organizers this year prepare to stage the 60th festival on April 6.
Its popularity grew such that there were 66,529 visitors in 2000, making it the world’s largest single-day maple syrup festival, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
Yet the man who made this possible had the humblest of roots.
He was adopted after his birth in Barrow upon Soar in Leicestershire, England in 1909 by John and Marie Ainsworth and he came to Canada as a child.
Ainsworth, who Mr. Biesinger described as “thin as rail,” also su ered from rheumatic fever as a youth and was plagued by ill health for much of his FESTIVAL FOUNDER
FROM 9
relatively short life, according to his niece.
“We knew that he wasn’t well, because I remember helping my aunt take him to the doctor’s o ce,” she said.
But nothing was going to stop him from following his dreams.
He opened Ainsworth Fruit Store, at 12 Arthur St. in Elmira, during the Great Depression and became both an active member of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church and the wider Elmira community.
Then he married Marie Duench in 1937. They had a son, Douglas, and one daughter, Ruth Marie, who are both now deceased.
The couple have three surviving grandchildren, Julia and Christina, who are both believed to live in Montreal, Quebec, and Alexander, who is understood to reside in Brantford.
“Uncle Herb was a really humble person,” Biesinger explained. “He talked
very softly, he was really well respected and very kind.”
Among the charitable deeds the retailer got involved in was handing out candy from his store to schoolchildren attending Christmas theatre shows, she notes.
“He always looked out for me, too,” said Biesinger, who grew up as one of two sets of triplets in Elmira.
At this point in the interview, her husband, whom she married two months after the rst festival and who raised pigs for a living until retiring in 2008, interjected, adding: “He checked me out when I started going with Judy.
“He asked me how I was going to support her and I told him I was going to buy a farm.
“So we got married and after the honeymoon I only had $90, but we managed to get a farm and here we are still.”
Mrs Biesinger, whose name at birth was Judith Duench, is also famous in
Elmira as one of the Duench triplets.
Growing up on Church Street, just a “block away from my uncle,” she and her two sisters, Susan and Patricia, even featured in a newspaper advert for the Royal Bank of Canada.
“Back in 1944, when we were born, it was still pretty unusual for all three triplets to survive and so we became pretty well known,” she explained.
Amazingly, the trio, whose birth weight ranged between 3lb 1oz and 3lb 8oz, were not the only triplets in town.
Molly, Corrine and Isabel Carbert also lived in Elmira.
In 1947, when they were three years old, the Duench girls joined the Carberts and two other sets of triplets from Kitchener for a picnic that was photographed.
The others were Jean, Edith and Edna Vogt and Terry, Mary Ann and Teddy Kickham.
Expanded shows honour late organizer, feature festival archives and 60th anniversary collectible
Among the changes for this year’s Elmira Maple Syrup Festival – celebrating its 60th outing – both the Toy Show and the Craft & Collectible Show will be under one roof at Elmira District Secondary School.
of long-time Toy Show organizer Doug McLean, who passed away in December at the age of 79.
“He’ll be missed,” says Kyle Bosomworth, who’s taken on the organization of the event. “I’ve been good friends with him for years, and involved with other events as well, not just the syrup festival. He was a wealth of knowledge for this [toy show] and through the John Deere collector groups. I miss bouncing ideas o of him.”
Bosomworth has been involved in the Toy Show for a number of years, with McLean handing o some of the duties as he served as the EMSF committee chair. While the pandemic curtailed the festival for a few years, Bosomworth organized last year’s show as the event returned to form.
This year, the show is back as a two-day event, having moved from Lions Hall. It’s a busy time for Bosomworth, who notes
McLean’s guidance would have helped.
Also this year, the show space will feature an archive of items – from memorabilia to newspaper clippings – chronicling the festival’s history.
Running on festival day from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., the shows also allow visitors to get a jump on things by opening the doors from 7-9 p.m. on the Friday night (April 5) at the high school’s cafeteria.
One big change, a sad one unfortunately, will be the absence
“Switching it back to a two-day show means quite a bit more work, so it’s tough when you don’t have that knowledge behind you, someone to bounce those ideas o ,” he
“Switching it back to a two-day show means quite a bit more says.
An avid fan of old tractors – he was past-presiCountry ibles. cylinder club that Bosom-
An avid fan of old tractors – he was past-president of the Upper Canada Two Cylinder Club and a member of the Friends of John Deere group at Country Heritage Park in Milton –McLean’s passion included related toys and collect-
It was through the two cylinder club that Bosomworth met McLean. The two shared similar interests, with Bosom-
FROM 13
worth getting into the collectibles, too. Working at Premier Equipment in Elmira, he’s understandably got an interest in toys related to John Deere, particularly truck banks.
Some of the items McLean collected will in fact be on display during this year’s show, he notes.
“His wife Pat, and I believe grandkids, are going to be coming to the Toy Show. They’re going to have a display of some of the toys that Doug has.”
A treasure trove of items McLean collected during his 25 years with the festival will also be part of the archival material visitors can peruse.
To mark the festival’s 60th year, the Toy Show will have available for sale
this year’s collectible, a 1932 Ford 3-Window Coupe decked out in the EMSF logo. A new collectible has been part of the festival every year since 1987.
In keeping with recent versions of the collectibles, the toy will be emblazoned with a maple leaf, though this one will be silver to mark the anniversary.
The souvenir item will also be available at the Township of Woolwich administration o ce, Premier Equipment and the BMO branch in Elmira.
Admission to both shows is $5 (free for children 12 and under accompanied by an adult).
More information can be found online on the festival website, www. elmiramaplesyrupfestival.com.
Pancakes with maple syrup at the Lion’s Hall. Starts at 7 am. $5/single pancake, $1/sausage, $1/beverage. Served until 3 pm or while supplies last. 1
2
Shop the mall for goodies, crafts and a variety of food to indulge most appetites. Join the crowd and shop our local stores too.
3
Real maple syrup production is a truly Canadian experience that you and your family can enjoy on festival day. Head out to a local sugar bush by bus. Buses run from 9 am - 3 pm.
Ticket booth and bus pick-ups and drop-offs are located at EDSS off Brubacher Street.
• $6/adult (18+)
• $4/kids (3-17)
• under 2 are free
4
5
Gore Park bandstand.
Enjoy live music from local bands from 10 am - 3 pm.
Purchase the 60th Anniversary Collector Truck here! Browse and shop the vendors, and see the toys from throughout the years.
60th Archive Museum
Stroll through the displays of festival history.
Discover a variety of hand-made crafts, collectibles and quilts. Come and see a real quilting bee with local Mennonite Quilters.
Shows at E.D.S.S.
Friday 7 pm - 9 pm
Saturday 8:30 am - 4 pm
One admission fee for all 3 areas
$5/adult
12 & under free (with an adult)
6
Take home a keepsake of your time in Elmira and support the local Scouting group. Partner up to saw a log the old-fashion way and have it branded with a maple leaf by a local Scout. $5/slice
7
Live music will be on the stage from 8:45 Take in the Pancake Flipping Contest in the lot of the WMC from 11 am - 1 pm. Various trucks and buskers will also be found here. your tastebuds and join in the music and fun WMC. Just a short walk from the downtown
It will be an all new experience for your family this year with an expanded location and new fun additions! Kids are going to love this area. Open 9 am to 3 pm. Visit the taffy demonstration and try one of our new Festival Cones. $2 each
Kids Activities: Inflatables, pony rides, rock climbing wall, face painting and the Kiddies Fun Trak. Activities and rides range from $5 - $10 cash
Farm Discovery Zone: Come to the area of the Buggy Barn and meet local farmers and learn first-hand about environmental stewardship, food safety, and good animal practices. This area is sponsored by Farm & Food Care Ontario.
The Zion Mennonite Church at 47 Arthur St. will be open to have a break as well as a Breast Feeding area.
Watch for the free town shuttle that leaves the downtown mall from Hampton and Park Streets.
Take a fun ride to and from the festival by train. Visit waterloocentralrailway.com for schedule and ticket prices.
For more information please visit the website at: www.ElmiraMapleSyrupFestival.com
When you arrive to Elmira follow signs and people to various parking lots, depending on your entry point. Avoid slow traffic on the south expressway, take Northfield Dr., turn west on 86, then right on Arthur. Park at Elmira Pet Products and catch a shuttle into town. Three shuttles named "Maple," "Pancake," and "Syrup" will transport you between parking lots. Remember your shuttle's name to get back to your spot.
Parking is $5 per vehicle and includes the shuttle ride to the festival.
*Parking attendants will only accept cash for parking spots.
Producer reveals how reverse osmosis, vacuum lines, and climate change have transformed the sweet tradition
The plumes of steam and unmistakable smell of pancake topping wafting through the spring air are the same as they were a hundred years ago.
But the method of making maple syrup has changed a lot over the last century and even during the past two decades.
“The biggest di erence now is our reverse osmosis machine,” explains Andrew Sallans, whose Maple Tap Farm won this year’s sap fest’s “producer of the year” prize.
“It concentrates the sap and it does almost half the work for us very quickly, instead of having to boil it all.
“Our reverse osmosis machine is a bit like the ones people have in their houses, except that with those you’re getting rid of all of the impurities and getting pure water.
“With us, it’s the other way around. We want the impurities; we want the sugar in the sap. We keep that and throw the pure water down the drain.”
To demonstrate, Sallans pours two cups, one with the original sap, which contains about two per cent sugar, and another, which after reverse osmosis has nine per cent.
The rst one tastes much like regular tap water but with a slight woodiness. The second is so sweet it could be a kids’ drink. The maple avour is far more discernible too.
In fact, the post-reverse osmosis liquid is about as sugary as regular Coca-Cola.
However, the goal – or sweet spot – that Sallans is ultimately aiming for is 66.5 per cent.
“That’s the magic number,” he says. “It’s got to go to at least 66 per cent sugar to be legally considered maple syrup. We aim for 66.5 to 66.7 Brix sugar content.”
To do that still requires an incredible amount of boiling, though - around 10 hours - to turn the 6,000-litre tank of sap, which he hauled in on a truck, into just 150 litres of syrup.
So he keeps the re stoked – using a mixture of broken pallets and wood from his own farmland in New Dundee – and keeps on boiling late into the night, occasionally resting in an armchair that sits less than a foot away from his giant, stainless steel evaporator.
Yet, despite all this e ort, Sallans insists “I like to work,” even when it gets him up at 1 a.m., as was the case a few nights before after a phone app had indicated that sap was not pumping.
For him, there is no place he’d rather be than inside the sugar shack, doing what he and his father had done together since he was a child.
Sadly, Wally Sallans, a man who was “passionate about syrup” and called the product he devoted his life to “liquid gold,” died aged 68 last October.
The grandfather to two lost his two-year battle with pancreatic cancer after making what would turn out to be the bottle
FROM 19
judged best by the Elmira Maple Syrup Festival committee’s three independent expert judges this year.
It was a record third time that Maple Tap Farm has won and the award was handed out to his son instead at Waterloo Region’s rst-tap ceremony on Feb. 23.
Yet, despite dealing with grief, this syrup-making dynasty simply has to carry on.
Out in the bush, his wife Jennifer Sallans, who is joined by their dog Sampson, an 18-month-old St. Bernard and Bernese Mountain Dog cross, points out some of the 4,000 trees they tap.
Between them snake miles of blue lines, thin exible pipes through which the sap is sucked out using vacuum pumps and then carried to giant storage tanks.
She pulls one of the lines out and the noise it makes is similar to the sound of sucking in air through pursed lips.
The days of collecting buckets are long gone, she explains, but some things are still the same – including the amount of syrup trees can provide.
“One tap should give you roughly 40 litres of sap, and it takes about that to make one litre of syrup,” she says.
It might sound like a lot, but that is much less than it would take for other types of trees, she points out.
“It takes 100 litres of sap from a birch tree to make one litre of syrup,” she says.
As well as the reverse osmosis machines and vacuum pumps, another thing that has changed in the industry is the weather, which due to climate change is much less predictable than it used to be and, as with the mild winter we’ve had this year, it often involves much earlier starts.
Increasingly for producers, it is a race against time.
“When it doesn’t freeze at night and the buds start to come out on the trees, the season has gone,” explains Mrs. Sallans who says she met her husband while serving him at Swiss Chalet restaurant and then was surprised to see him again at her church the next day.
This year they started tapping the trees at the end of January, whereas they usually begin three weeks later around the Family Day weekend, she added.
Back inside the sugar shack, which is actually a factory-like metal construction rather than the ramshackle wooden huts of yesteryear, Mr. Sallans is starting to collect syrup.
As the bubbling liquid reaches 107C – seven degrees higher than for boiling water – it starts to ow into a tank. “That’s syrup temperature,” he explains.
Although cloudy, the taste is magni cent, possibly even improved by its warmth and freshness.
At this point the syrup’s sugar content is checked and any that doesn’t hit the magic 67.5 per cent benchmark is heated in a separate unit until it does.
Once it’s ready, it can be ltered through a press using a fabric that’s similar to co ee paper, only it becomes thicker, denser and distinctly caramel coloured after liquid has passed through it.
“I once tricked my nephew into thinking it was fudge,” jokes Sallans, who also runs a landscape machinery repair business from a building next door to his sugar shack.
Later he points out that his 10-year-old relative, Parker Galloway, may follow in the family footsteps and is very curious about the maple business.
“Oh, he machine guns me with questions about how syrup is made,” Sallans adds as he continues getting syrup ready for this year’s 60th sap fest, which is taking place on Apr. 6.
TRADITION!
Late syrup maker’s award-winning batch honours his passion, as son carries on the family tradition
Wally Sallans devoted his life to crafting the perfect maple syrup, calling it “liquid gold.”
But, in a cruel twist of fate, it was in death that he was awarded the Elmira sap fest’s “producer of the year” award for a record third time.
The former owner of Maple Tap Farm in New Dundee lost his two-year battle with pancreatic cancer aged 68 last October after making what would turn out to be the winning bottle.
So the Elmira Maple Syrup Festival committee instead handed the 2024 prize to his proud son, who now runs the business, at a rst-tap ceremony held Feb. 23 by the Waterloo-Wellington branch of the Ontario producers’ association.
was runner-up this year.
“He would have been so pleased to have known he had won the award for a third time.”
As winner, Maple Tap Farms will be awarded a stand that has pride of place to sell their sweet nectar at next year’s Elmira Maple Syrup Festival.
Snyder Acres, whose winning syrup last year also came third in an all-Canada competition at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair, will be given the same honour at this year’s sap fest, which is being held on Apr. 6.
The rst-tap ceremony was attended by a host of dignitaries, including Kitchener-Conestoga MP Tim Louis and his provincial counterpart Mike Harris, Woolwich Mayor Sandy Shantz and Region of Waterloo Chair Karen Redman.
“Dad loved making maple syrup. It was his passion,” said Andrew Sallans, who was presented with the award at Snyder Acres farm near Breslau, which won last year’s competition and
Andrew Sallans, who has been helping to craft “liquid gold” since he was 10 years old, said: “My dad loved doing this and I love it too. I love to work.”
He said nothing puts him o , even having to get out of bed in the middle of the night to x a problem in the sugarbush, as happened a few nights before the award ceremony.
“It was 1 a.m. I looked at my phone and there was no vacuum in the bush. So I took the four-wheeler a mile back into the bush and I stayed there until I xed it.
“And then at four o’clock, I had to go back again. Something else went wrong. Oh, and at seven o’clock, I decided to take it all apart and bring it back to the shop here and x it properly.”
Hard work and dedication clearly runs in the family.
Paying tribute to the late sugarbush champion, the new Maple Tap Farm owner’s wife, Jennifer Sallans, who also attended the rst-tap ceremony, said her father-in-law never gave up making syrup, even as he got sicker.
“I don’t know if he was stubborn or he just had the willingness to keep going, but we had two really good years with him,” she said.
“And he was really good right up until about two weeks before he passed. He was still even down at the sugar shack packaging syrup.”
She described her father-in-law as “kind” and “quiet.”
“He didn’t generally say a lot but when he started talking about maple syrup you couldn’t get him to stop.”
Wally Sallans, who had two children with Lois, his wife of 47 years, and later two grandchildren, began making the sweet
amber liquid we all love when he was aged just 13.
It started with just a few pails, with each tree making 40 litres of sap that could be boiled into a single litre of syrup.
But the business eventually grew into 4,000 tapped trees collecting around 160,000 litres of sap and making about 4,000 litres of “liquid gold” every year.
Maple Tap Farms became so successful that they now even keep a “strategic reserve” of Canada’s favourite pancake topping in case they have a bad harvest.
Their operation has also become much more mechanized since they began, with miles of vacuum-pumped pipelines snaking through the sugarbush instead of buckets and a reverse-osmosis machine that reduces the need to boil so much sap.
Jennifer Sallans credits the “minerals in the soil” as well as her late father-in-law’s passion for their award-winning syrup.
“I think we just have some really good sugar maples,” she said.
“We just have some really good trees. We have some really good property. And I think Wally spent his lifetime perfecting it.
“And so we’re just trying to carry on his legacy and trying to carry on that family tradition.”
Perfect for cleaning out garages, sheds, basements or attics!
(No liquids, paints, or hazardous waste permitted)
Special limited time pricing of $500 includes delivery, one-week rental and removal of a 14-yard bin. Disposal up to 2000kgs is included, priced separately if total is more than 2000kgs. The offer is valid from April 1 to June 1, 2024.
GFL Environmental is proud to present special
Waterloo Region residents can call 519-741-6463 to book their bin anytime between April 1 and June 1st 2024, to secure this limited time offer.
GFL Environmental is proud to use locally fabricated containers to serve our customers!
Producers showcase modern techniques as mother nature’s mild winter cuts this year’s season short
It may not, strictly speaking, have been the rst time sap was drawn from a sugar maple in this unusually mild winter. But with spring in the air and the sun shining brightly, the region’s ceremonial rst tap nevertheless drew producers and dignitaries alike to a Breslau-area farm Feb. 23.
Kitchener-Conestoga MP Tim Louis was all smiles as he dutifully bored into the chosen tree, with a cordless yellow DeWalt power drill rather than the rustic hand cranks of yesteryear. Using a decidedly non-electric hammer, he then knocked in the tap and, after a bucket was attached, the sap duly dripped forth at Snyder Acres farm near Breslau.
Kevin Snyder, the president of the Waterloo-Wellington branch of the Ontario Maple Syrup Association, assured onlook-
ers that the tree was not hurt.
To demonstrate, he had earlier shown a cutting from a sugar maple that proved how they are able to repeatedly heal themselves after being tapped.
“If you create a wound in a tree, it’s like cutting yourself –your body heals, and so do trees,” he explained.
Snyder, whose cousin Graham Snyder runs Snyder Acres with his son Cody, admitted that the process was “addictive.”
“Once you start tapping trees, it’s like ‘We need to do it more.’ It’s a disease, actually, just like people with sugar,” he said during the ceremony on February 23.
Mike Harris, the MPP for Kitchener-Conestoga, agreed with the diagnosis in his own remarks.
“It’s interesting that you mention that,” he said. “Because I have several friends who have started out with a few pails just out in the backyard and it’s now 30, 40, 50 pails and full-size boilers in their garages.
“It is a labour of love, so thank you for all that you do.”
Perhaps echoing the thaw of ice and snow, relations between Harris, a Tory, and Louis, a Liberal, also seemed surprisingly warm too.
Despite representing rival political parties, the two were earlier seen chatting and laughing together, with Harris later telling The Observer: “Actually, we really get along.”
Also in attendance was Woolwich Mayor Sandy Shantz and Region of Waterloo Chair Karen Redman, who both spoke to the crowd as well.
After the speeches, Matt Jessop, the chair of the Elmira Maple Syrup Festival committee, handed out his organization’s award for this year’s “producer of the year” to Maple Tap Farm from New Dundee.
It was a record third win for the out t, but sadly the man who
FROM 27
made the winning syrup, Wally Sallans, died aged 68 in October after a two-year battle with pancreatic cancer.
His son Andrew Sallans accepted the award together with his daughter-in-law Jennifer, who had earlier revealed they had started tapping trees on January 31.
“We usually begin on the Family Day weekend, but this year, because of the milder weather, we started three weeks earlier than usual,” she explained.
The excitement at Snyder Acres didn’t begin and end with the tapping and award.
Before the ceremony, Graham Snyder, whose syrup won last year’s sap fest award, was in his sugar shack demonstrating how the maple magic happens.
The process requires 40 litres of sap, which is about what can be collected from one tree during a season, to make a single litre of syrup.
Inside the shack, Snyder was particularly proud of his Lapierre Hurricane Force 5 evaporator.
The powerful, sealed furnace “turns what used to take 10 hours into 10 minutes,” he explained.
Snyder, wearing a Lapierre-brand hat, also extolled the virtues of the reverse osmosis machine that concentrates the sugar in the sap and expels the pure water from it.
“In the old days, it all took a lot more boiling,” Snyder added. “Now we can reduce the volume in half without any boiling at all, and it’s very quick.”
Outside the shack, the smell ofsteaming sap mixed in the open air with the fried sausages that were being prepared for the pancake breakfast after the ceremony. After all this talk of maple, smells and various demonstrations, there was only one thing left: digging in.
“It smells so good, I can’t wait,” said sap fest vice chair Quentin Mayer as he queued for his most quintessentially Canadian of breakfasts.
A delicious tribute to spring’s early arrival with this creative blending corn and squash in a sweet and savory soup
Is it spring? Is it winter? I think we’re all confused.
Even the maple trees are confused, however, as they’ve been producing a record early batch of sap. And you know what that means – an early batch of syrup!
That means we’ve got to not only get the apjacks going on the griddle, but to also get some ideas of something awesome we can make for dinner using Canada’s liquid gold.
The idea with this corn recipe is to utilize it in two di erent ways.
▢ 2 Tbsp. olive oil
▢ 1 butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cubed
▢ 1/2 bundle rosemary
▢ 1/2 cup pure maple syrup
▢ 2 Tbsp. butter
▢ 1 onion, thinly sliced
▢ 2 celery stalks, cubed
▢ 3 garlic cloves,
1. Place squash on prepared tray and toss in enough oil to coat, syrup, rosemary, ginger and season.
2. Bake at 400F until lightly caramelized.
3. Meanwhile, soften onion, celery, garlic in butter over medium heat.
thinly sliced
▢ 3 Tbs. chopped fresh ginger
▢ 2 L chicken or vegetable stock
▢ 5 cobs corn
▢ Salt and pepper to taste
▢ 1 lime, juiced
▢ 1 bunch green onion
▢ Pinch of salt, sugar
▢ 1/2 cup crème fraiche
One is to boil some in with the soup before pureeing to add to its body. The other is to toast it to give it an unbelievable texture and taste to produce a relish topping, which adds amazing texture and presentation value to the soup.
This is such a great North American recipe as its two main ingredients, squash and corn, are not only native to our lands, but also ones that were enjoyed by the indigenous peoples who taught us about syrup to begin with.
5. Toast corn combined with scallions, lime juice to make relish.
6. When soup is ready, puree with blender and bowl.
7. Garnish with crème and relish.
4. Add cooked squash, half of the corn, stock and bring to boil. Reduce to light simmer for another half an hour.
Chef Bruce Du is the operator of “Chef Du at RiverSong” Banquet Hall, Café and Culinary Centre just outside of St. Jacobs, which hosts private events, banquets, team building and cooking classes and also run breakfast and lunch in the café from Wed. – Sat; info@chefdu .ca.
Producers across Ontario open sugarbushes for behind-the-scenes look at maple syrup production
If the festival has you looking for more things maple, you’re in luck. The Elmira festivities coincide with the eighth annual Maple Weekend (April 6 and 7) across the province.
Organized by the Ontario Maple Syrup Producers’ Association (OMSPA), the weekend provides visitors a first-hand opportunity to see how maple products are produced, from tree to table, along with the chance to taste and purchase a variety of maple products.
“Spring is the most exciting time of the year for maple syrup producers, especially when we get an early run as we did this year,” says OMSPA president Randal Goodfellow. “Maple syrup producers across the province are looking forward to opening up their sugarbush for visitors and inviting them to join in the celebration of the sweetest time of the year.”
In Waterloo-Wellington, there are a number of producers who will be happy to share with you how their operation works. Many will be offering free samples of fresh syrup, as well as maple candies and confections. You can take in sugarbush trails, sugar making demonstrations, taffy on snow, horse-drawn sleigh rides and the like.
Demonstrations of how syrup is made will range from simply boiling the sap in a cauldron over an open fire, or processing it through high-tech reverse-osmosis systems and modern fuel-efficient evaporators.
Offerings and hours (some are just taking part Saturday, for instance) will vary from operation to operation. See www. mapleweekend.ca for more information.
