Nova Scotia - Week 10: The Maple Harvest

What a cute couple!

Fifty liters to one. That is the ratio of sap one needs to collect to make one liter maple syrup. This week we had the unique opportunity  to visit a maple tree farm. (It goods to be connected to pastor who has way more connection then we do; haven’t met to many new people in my basement yet.) It was not a full out Maple Syrup production facility with miles of hoses, but was very interesting and educational nonetheless.

Collection Bottles

The maple sap season is only about two or three weeks long; only in the early spring when the sap is traveling up the trees. Even in this short season good productions is entirely dependent on the weather. For optimum production it needs to freeze at night and then warm  up significantly during the day; without these conditions the sap barely flows. The tap is best placed directly in line with a large branch far above it, to collect the sap feeding the branch. A spigot should not be pleased within three inches from where it has been placed previously, nor on a tree less than nine inches in diameter.  This is just a snippet of the information which we learned about maple syrup harvesting.

A Drip of Sap

It was good to get out for an afternoon, see and learn something different. I am tempted to buy a couple of spigots and start tapping  some of our own trees, but without leaves I can’t tell a maple from and oak, ash or most other trees for that matter. So instead I will do the next best thing – buy some.  

The Finished Product

In all this it is amazing to see what is happening behind the scenes. If you look at the trees covered in frost, they appear dead and dormant, but inside with the first hint of heat, there is life. Sap is flowing, providing nutrients from the roots to the rest of the tree. Life can be like that, there can be so much happening inside a person completely unnoticed by others. Often, unbeknownst to us, the Holy Spirit is nudging a person, providing spiritual nutrients thru words, thru their observations, and thru life experiences – preparing a person for a life they cannot even comprehend. I think they call that prevenient grace. (Eph.3:14-20)   Praise God is not all dependent on us!      

The Boiler House