The Rural Voice, 2000-03, Page 28OPPORTUNITY TAPS
Ontario is still an importer of maple syrup and there's an opprotunity
to expand the industry. You may not get rich but there are other attractions to the
business, producers say.
By Keith Roulston
There are more reasons than money
to get into the maple syrup
business, says Dick O'Brien, past
president of the Ontario Maple Syrup
Producers Association, but there's
money.to be made too.
"There's nothing like it in the
spring," O'Brien says of the process of
tapping trees, collecting sap and boiling
it to make maple syrup. It's a great way
to feel the pulse of the season picking
up, he says.
There seem to be a good number of
people interested in getting into maple
syrup production, says O'Brien who also
sells equipment for maple syrup
production. In Quebec, the largest maple
syrup production area in the world, there
are both new producers and rapid
expansion of existing producers. If
production is expanding in Quebec
there's even more reason to produce
Maple syrup in Ontario because Ontario
can't satisfy its own market demand and imports maple
syrup, O'Brien says.
Many Ontario producers have the opportunity to sell
virtually everything they make at retail prices, not
wholesale, O'Brien says though there are also wholesale
opportunities for producers who want to sell to others who
can't meet the retail demand through their own production.
"If you make quality maple syrup in Ontario you have
no trouble selling it," O'Brien says. __
He also sees the opportunity to the Grey -Bruce area to
set standards for superb quality syrup. Soil in the area is
over a limestone base, similar to Lanark County in eastern
Ontario, generally recognized as the home of the best
quality syrup. The same conditions exist on St. Joseph
Island in Georgian Bay where maple syrup production is
expanding so rapidly that O'Brien jokes there soon won't
be a bush on the island that isn't producing maple syrup.
People can get into maple syrup at any level from very
small to a true business, says O'Brien who started very
small himself in his Priceville-area bush. When he started
he got plans that are still available for turning a 45 -gallon
drum into an evaporator stove, got someone to build him a
stainless steal evaporator pan to fit on top of it, and tapped
trees using buckets.
The second year he added a little pipeline and slowly
learned as he went along before deciding to go bigger and
getting into professional equipment.
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26 THE RURAL VOICE
Maple syrup production can also be a
first entrepreneurial endeavour for young
family members. David Pullen got into
the business when he was 10 and his
younger brother Michael was eight,
tapping a few trees around the yard of his
parents' farm near Clinton. Their father
Don set up an old flat pan for them to boil
down the syrup. Each year they grew a
little until they had about 500 taps.
Today Pullen. operates McCulley's Hill
Farm near St. Marys with 2,000 taps.
Nobody's getting rich from maple syrup,
he .warns, but he has expanded his
operation by offering an agritourism
business, with tours of the bush and
evaporator. He and his wife Darlene also
operate a farm market selling fruits and
vegetables and other farm produce.
While some start small and build, there
are others in Ontario who have decided
they had the bush and they wanted to go
directly to a commercial size of 1,000 to
2,000 taps. If you have the bush and you have the
knowledge and you have the money, O'Brien says you
might want to aim for 1,000 to 2,000 taps, buying
equipment that can handle that volume, even if you start
out at half that amount of production.
So, what's involved in getting started?
First of all, do research and get some advice from
others. There's a good reference book called The
Maple Syrup Producer's Manual that costs $14.95
and is one of the best investments you can make, he says.
There's also a CD ROM called Maple INFO that can be
ordered through the Ontario Maple Syrup Producers'
Association website www.ontariomaple.com and
information on the University of Guelph's website but you
need to be computer literate to get the most out of the
online information, he says..
Besides research, get advice from others in the business.
"I still visit other operators to get ideas," he says. Much
can be gained by looking at others operations because
"different people have different ideas".
How much bush do you need? O'Brien says the rule of
thumb is about 80 taps per acre (some larger trees have
more than one tap). It means there are many woodlots in
Grey -Bruce large enough to produce valuable quantities of
syrup.
Though the standard is that a producer needs 1,000 taps
to be of commercial size, O'Brien says that study takes into