The Rural Voice, 1991-03, Page 33wanted to set up a demonstration of
the old-fashioned way of making
maple taffy. Always willing to be
accommodating, Susanne took a small
stove to the store, boiled the syrup to
the right consistency, and then poured
it over a large pan of crushed ice to the
delight of appreciative customers. "It
wasn't quite as good as pouring it on
fresh snow, like we would at the sugar
shack," says Susanne, "but it drew
attention to the maple syrup products."
When the Robinsons aren't busy
with their "sticky business," they at-
tend to a 38 cow -calf herd built around
pure-bred Simmental cows, selling the
calves each spring as yearlings.
As well, they grow winter wheat
and white beans in rotation with hay, a
system that fits in nicely with their
syrup operation. The beans don't have
to be planted until early June, after the
boiling operations are wrapped up for
the year, while the hay and wheat
harvests are summer jobs.
Like all farming, however, it's not
always smooth sailing, and besides the
weather, maple syrup production has
other problems.
One that Bill is fighting is a move
by some processors to put the words
"maple syrup" in large type on bottles
of blended table syrup which contain
only 15 per cent true maple. "We
don't mind them using some pure
syrup for blends, but those large words
on the labels are fooling consumers
into thinking they're getting pure
maple syrup," says Bill.
Producers have also had to contend
with a surplus of syrup in Quebec —
by far Canada's biggest producer —
that could depress market prices—
currently at $40 to $45 per four litre
container — if it were dumped on the
market. The syrup, much of it
purchased by the federal government
in 1988 and put into a "maple bank" in
a program to lick up excess production
and stabilize prices, is under the
control of the UAP, a Quebec
farmers' group.
But the Robinsons remain
optimistic that there's still a good
future in making maple syrup by
combining good production and
marketing expertise. After all, they've
added another 10 miles of tubing in a
new bush acquired this year.0
Now's the time for a
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1990 Ltd.
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MARCH 1991 27