1

The Maple Sugar Industry

Maple syrup has long been made by the inhabitants of Albert County as a special treat to mark the end of winter. During the fall months deciduous species of trees such as maple and poplar shed their leaves and the sap produced by these trees begins to collect down in the root systems of the trees. In the spring when the ground begins to thaw, warm days combined with cold nights help to draw the sap back up from the root system into the rest of the tree. The sap produced by one particular species of deciduous tree, the sugar maple, can be harvested and boiled down to produce maple sugar products. Most of the land mass in Albert County is composed of wooded hills and mountains. Since sugar maple trees are native to the area, the maple sugar industry has a long history in Albert County. The native peoples of the area were the first to produce maple syrup from the sap of maple sugar trees. When the first French settlers arrived here in the early 1700's the natives of the area taught them how to harvest sap from the trees by chopping a cut into a tree and driving a wooden spout or spile into the cut. The sap from the tree would then drain out along this spout and drop into birch bark baskets on the ground.

2

Birch Bark Baskets made by local Micmac Indians.
15 September 1750

3

Later the sap would be collected, by hand, from these birch bark containers and boiled down, in a large cauldron, to make maple syrup.

The first people to sell maple sugar products in Albert County were the Colpitts and the Steeves families of Elgin, in 1799. They used the same methods for harvesting sap and boiling it to make maple syrup that were first shown to the early French Settlers nearly one hundred years earlier. After the sap had been collected and boiled down, the syrup was then carried through the snow to the Pollett River and sailed by canoe to markets in Moncton. That first year the Colpitts and Steeves Families produced 6200 pounds of sugar. Today, many family owned maple sugar camps still exist, the maple sugar products produced at these camps are sold in stores across the province. In 1925, these small family owned businesses sold $15,000 worth of products.

4

An unknown maple sugar camp in Albert County, during the early twentieth century.
19 September 1925
Albert County, New Brunswick, Canada

5

In later years, sap would be collected by drilling holes in the trees using a brace and bit and then driving metal spiles into the holes.

6

A wood brace with a metal bit, used to drill holes in a maple tree.
15 September 1890

7

Metal containers would then be attached to the spiles. The sap from these containers was collected each day, by hand, and hauled in large tanks to the sugar camp by horses. Today, however, miles of plastic tubes run up the sides of mountains, connecting the spiles in each tree together. Gravity then draws the sap down the hill through these tubes and into large evaporators inside the sugar camp which is located at the bottom of the hill. The evaporators then boil down the sap into maple syrup in much the same way that the early settlers boiled the sap down in large cauldrons.