First taps signal sweet start to maple season at Maple Tap Farm
- Mar 5
- 3 min read
By Galen Simmons
A crowd of maple syrup producers, local politicians and industry representatives gathered at Maple Tap Farm near New Dundee Friday morning for the Waterloo Wellington Maple Producers’ annual First Tapping Ceremony, the traditional kickoff to maple season and the first agricultural crop of the year.
Hosted this year by Andrew and Jennifer Sallans, whose syrup has twice topped the Elmira Maple Syrup Festival’s producers’ contest and placed third at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair, the event combined a ceremonial tapping, a tour of the bush and sugarhouse, and a lunch of pancakes and sausage topped with last year’s maple syrup.
On behalf of the Waterloo Wellington subcommittee of the Ontario Maple Syrup Producers’ Association, chair Kevin Snyder welcomed guests to what he called the unofficial start of spring for maple producers.
“We do these annual events every year to celebrate the beginning of the season,” Snyder said. “It is the first crop of the year in the agricultural business, but a lot of people don’t realize that we’re actually harvesting the sugar the tree made last summer.”
He reminded those in attendance that maple syrup is uniquely tied to North American climate and hardwood forests. Producers rely on a freeze-thaw cycle to get sap moving.
“We need that warm temperature during the daytime and freezing nights to get the sap to flow and that’s what we’re able to capture out of the tree,” Snyder said, adding that while Quebec produces roughly 70 per cent of the world’s maple syrup, research has shown Ontario has more tappable maple trees.
“This winter, we actually had a real winter for a change,” he said, noting steady snow cover, a cold, windy January and only a few thaws. “The conditions do look favourable that we’re going to be in full production next week. … The tree has it in it. We just need the right conditions to be able to get the sap out of the tree.”
As in past years, the first tapping ceremony also served as the announcement of the Elmira Maple Syrup Festival’s 2027 Producer of the Year. This year’s honours went to Tom Snyder of TDS Farms Ltd. in West Montrose, with Sunlane Farms of Alma named runner-up. Both producers will be featured at future Elmira festivals.
For the Sallans family, hosting the ceremony at Maple Tap Farm was both an honour and a continuation of a long family tradition.
“It’s something we always talked about. We thought it’d be neat,” Andrew Sallans said, noting his late father, Wally, would have loved to see the yard full of producers and dignitaries. “My father never missed a year since he was 13. … I’ve done it all my life, so I don’t know what spring’s like without it.”
Maple syrup season is also very much a family affair.
“I married into it,” Jennifer Sallans said with a laugh. “I enjoy being outside, and it’s family too. We have a lot of family, cousins, friends that come and help us, and it’s just kind of a neat time to hang out and make syrup.”
The Sallans recently bought a larger reverse-osmosis machine to make their operation more efficient. The larger machine filters water from the sap, increasing sugar concentrations to as high as 14 per cent before it goes into the boiler.
“New equipment is going to make a big difference in time and energy savings,” Andrew Sallans said. “Less boil time.”
By the end of the boil, which can last as long as a day or more, the sugar content of the maple syrup should be around 66 per cent.
While Friday’s ceremony highlighted commercial producers, Andrew Sallans said maple is something anyone with the right tree can try on a smaller scale.
“Anybody can do it,” he said. “If you have a maple tree in your backyard, you can do it. It’s a lot different doing it on a big scale, but it’s still just as much fun.”
Snyder encouraged maple fans to seek out locally made syrup at their grocery store or buy directly from area farms. A list of producers can be found through the Ontario Maple Syrup Producers’ website.
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