The Royal Winter Fair 2025
This past week Rodger, William and myself were in Toronto for the first 5 days of the Royal Winter Fair. Having made more syrup than we normally sell in a year this past season I thought it might be a fun opportunity to make new connections down south. Get more people down that way interested in our product. We do have sales reps (My Mom and Brother) down that way, so why not?
Every syrup season Mike and I think about how we could expand, if we even want to expand and what that might look like if we do. We seem to have found a size that works for us at the moment. We can manage 300-400 taps ourselves pretty well. We have the capacity to go up to 1000 on our sugar bush property, however, with expansion of taps, comes expansion of storage space etc. It’s a lively debate every year, and ultimately we always seem to decide that if we can just improve upon what we do each year then our customers will continue to get a quality product, and that is more important to us than growing. A different take on growth if you will. If we expand, the flavour of our syrup might change a bit to be more in line with what you might get from larger producers. Not that their syrup is bad. It’s not. It’s syrup and it’s pretty delicious no matter how it’s made. That said, we pride ourselves on our wood fired small batch flavour that only comes from our pre-heater and flat pan method. One option we might have is to find ourselves a newer more efficient 2×6 wood fired flat pan evaporator and replace the older one we have. Along with some proper grading equipment, those are likely the next steps we’ll take in our Maple journey. Maybe once our boys are bigger we can step up our production – but even then, we do not plan to go much bigger than we are. Being a woodfired operation, one has to consider the supply of firewood is not infinite and we don’t want to degrade our forest by taking out inputs that would normally feed the soil microbiome and sustain the ecosystem. It’s a fine balancing act.
Anyway, back to the Royal. The experience and connections we made there were lovely. It was such an honor to sell there and meet another bunch of Maple Syrup loving (and Birch syrup loving) people. We are so thankful to those who came and gave our syrup a try and decided to support our small business. I hope to return again next year, and bring down some of our Maple Syrup based soaps, and our collaborative wood work as well. It’s all a matter of if I can get Mike on board, and also, how our syrup season in 2026 pans out. If we have another great year, then I will happily make the trek to service our southern customers (though I will need to figure out a way to take more breaks – those are some long days!!) I hope I can get to the Horse Show next year too.
In the meantime, it’s back to reality here – have to get a bit more firewood done before Winter really sets in. The kiddos are back into their school routine and I am back to mail delivery. There is a shell of a house at the farm now, and we have to get the windows and doors installed this week. All very exciting, and stressful. Christmas isn’t far off either!!
I will keep you posted on things to come!
Enjoy
-Jan
