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Sweet day in the bush – photo essay

By 
Sandy Black
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Published: April 27, 2023

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A man walks among maple trees, each of which has a pail on its trunk collecting sap.
Dave Barns, past chair of the Assiniboine Food Forest Corp. and owner of the Treesblood Farm, inspects some of the 200 tapped trees on the first day of the maple sap run. This is his 15th season. | Sandy Black photo

The Assiniboine Food Forest Corp. and Treesblood Farm on the east edge of Brandon held their annual tour of the maple bush and sugar shack April 16.

This year the sap run was delayed by an unusually cold March. Temperatures rarely got above freezing so the sap never left the roots.

More than 200 people attended the hourly tours to learn how sap is collected and made into syrup. Approximately 40 litres of sap make a litre of syrup. | Sandy Black photos

A young boy is carrying a pail of sap.
Eight-year-old Alex Gordon of Brandon carries a pail of sap to the collecting pail as his father, Randall, gets another one ready. | Sandy Black photo
A young boy tastes a spoonful of sap.
Ace Ritchot of Brandon sucks down a spoonful of Manitoba maple syrup while his grandfather, Ron Lavoie of Brandon, helps out. | Sandy Black photo
a farmer skims foam off the surface of the hot sap as it is boiled in the sugar shack.
Barns skims the boiling sap foam (calcium malate) on the wood fired evaporator. | Sandy Black photo
A close-up of a spigot on a maple tree with sap dripping from the end of the spigot.
Maple sap runs from a tap on a tree. About one litre of sap normally runs out a tree per hour. | Sandy Black photo

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