A good weekend in Perth

[ennismaple]

The annual Festival of the Maples was in Perth this past Saturday and thankfully we had great weather. It rained at 6:30 a.m. as we were leaving the house and again at 5:30 p.m. on our way back home. In between it was sunny and warm. The crowds were heavy and people were buying syrup. We had our best day ever for total sales. I won 1st prize for my maple butter and 4th prize for granulated sugar. Our booth also won 4th place. Overall it was a great day.

We spoke to a lot of other producers from the area and almost everyone was at 50% to 75% of a normal crop, some even less. We're short a few drums for the anticipated demand from our retail outlets between now and next spring so we talked to a few of the larger producers about buying syrup from them. Nobody has any syrup for sale and I've heard there is nothing available from Quebec either.

[H. Walker]

Nice going at the festival!

I sold all my bulk syrup to a local fellow producer to fill one of his orders. I indeed think that there will be a shortage in the coming year.

[ennismaple]

Nice going at the festival!

I sold all my bulk syrup to a local fellow producer to fill one of his orders. I indeed think that there will be a shortage in the coming year.

There is a shortage already. One of our neighbouring bushes who has about 10,000 taps normally buys about as much syrup every year as he makes to fill his retail demand and for his new restaurant. I hear he only made 50% of a normal crop. We're looking to get a few drums from Atkinson's or Jakeman's to fill our anticipated demand. Of the drums we sold to Delta Foods only one of them was good amber that would have been suitable for packaging. The others had an off taste brought on by the first hot spell around April 9/10 and I wouldn't have wanted our name label on that syrup. Worst case we raise our prices and still sell out before Christmas.

[argohauler]

Ennismaple, Jakeman's get the majority of their syrup from Quebec. When I asked Bruce about the syrup surplus shortage in Quebec, he said there's still a lot of syrup there, you just have to know who to talk to.

I think they get a tractor trailer load every couple of weeks.