2021 Tapped Out Small Batch

I was five years old when I started making maple syrup. My mom had heard how to make it when she was in her twenties, and decided to try it with me the first spring we moved to our farm. 

We set out one sunny spring day to tap the maple trees. My mom made sure we asked each tree for permission to take some of its sap. In this process I created a close connection with the forest and learned how grand the forest truly is and what a small part of it I am. 

That first year we tapped the trees and hung mason jars from the spiles. We cooked the sap in a turkey roasting pan over a small fire and burnt our first batch to a crisp. I cried for hours. The sap ran again though and by the next week we had made our first batch of maple syrup. This time the syrup was black and full of soot, but to me it was perfect. I had made something by hand and I was so proud of it.

Over the last 25 years not a lot has changed. Every year I always take a moment to ask the forest for permission to make my maple syrup. I still make it in the same woods I did when I was five years old. I hang buckets from the spiles now instead of mason jars, and I have moved on from the turkey roasting pan. However, the essence remains the same: I try to make the best possible maple syrup with what mother nature gives me. It's cooked in the woods in flat pans over open fires that I keep burning all night long. Sap is continuously added to the pans until there is a natural break in the sap flow. This cooking process creates individual batches and unique flavours you know and love as the Tapped Out Small Batch.

My maple syrup has become much more than I could have ever imagined. It is a greeting from Canada in countries around the world, It is often hidden from the in-laws when they visit and rarely are the kids allowed to pour their own. Tapped Out Small Batch is a small pleasure in life that I am so humbled you all enjoy.

Thank you for your tremendous support over the years.

Graeme