Local maple syrup producers rebound after shaky start to season

A maple syrup season filled with highs and lows hasn’t held producers back from a successful harvest. Tom and Cathy Genoch of Bayfield Maple stand with their four children, Joe, Alice, Charlotte and Seb.

By Samantha Lawson

Local maple syrup farms are ending the season on a high note despite inconsistent and unpredictable weather at the beginning of March. Recent warm weather has caused the

sap to flow, and temperatures dipping below freezing at night create the perfect atmosphere within the tree.

“That’s kind of what you want, but it needs to freeze — that’s important. If it doesn’t freeze then that’s the killer,” said Steven Hern of Hern Line Heritage Maple Products.

“During the season, you can go two or three days with the warm, and then it needs to freeze and the tree kind of resets and brings up more sap again.”

Hern lives on a century farm outside of Exeter and has made use of a wood lot on the property to make maple syrup for the past five years. He said he taps four hundred trees on the 12-acre woodlot in mid-February to mark the beginning of the maple syrup season. Hern said the trees haven’t let him down this year.

“So far so good,” he said.

“We’re right on track I think to make a good crop so, can’t complain at all. “I’ve only been doing it for five years, I haven’t seen a bad season, really. I’m a bit of a novice that way, as far as experience

goes and long-term stuff.” Hern Line Heritage Maple Products aims to produce 1.5 litres of maple syrup per tap. And for 400 tapped trees, that adds up to a total yield of 600 litres of syrup.

Hern said they have produced over 300 litres as of mid-March.

“I think, with the way the weather looks, we’ll get a few runs yet,” Hern

said.

Over at Bayfield Maple, with a larger production established, they’re looking at a yield of roughly 2,650 litres for the season. Owner Tom Genoch said his bush on Pavillion Road has about 2,800 taps. The production trucks in sap from an additional 1,000 taps on a property owned by Genoch’s mother-in-law, Dianne Brandon, on the north side of Bayfield.

Brandon said they had an uncertain start to the season but still expect to get a good crop.

“We were really worried because it got quite warm, but it was early enough in the season that the trees didn’t start to bud,” Brandon said. Brandon is a long-seasoned syrup producer, having made maple syrup with her husband Brian for the past 21 years. The business has stayed within the

family with Brandon’s daughter, Cathy, and her husband, Tom, now carrying on

the sweet tradition. Bayfield Maple stocks their product on the shelves of numerous local businesses, including Shop Bike Coffee, and sells wholesale to Cait’s Cafe in Goderich to

be used in the cafe’s food and drinks. Whether it’s large-scale or smallscale, making maple syrup has its ups and downs and remains entirely dependent on the weather.

In the end, a few weather hiccups weren’t enough to sour the season. Thanks to a timely turn, local producers are set to enjoy a sweet spring harvest.