By Andrew Macdonald
The bad news for fans of Swan’s Maple Syrup, a family business in operation outside Tatamagouche since 1870, is that the February-March maple syrup season has ended on a dud of a note.
That is the word on Friday from Jim Bezanson, operator of the maple bush since 1980.
In a Notebook chat Friday, he said the season was terrible for maple syrup production, which has ended earlier than usual.
“Last summer was so hot and we had a mild winter,” and that saw buds come out on his maple trees in mid-March. “We’ve had a very poor season. And, what we did make was way too dark.”
Question: What will that mean for your financial viability of the 2021 season and sales of the product this year?
“It’s a good thing I have a day job,” says Bezanson, who makes ice cream at a factory in Truro.
Asked if global warming is at play with his maple business, he says, “I don’t know what’s going on,” but says this is the worst season he has had since taking over the multi-generation operation in 1980.
“We had a good season last year. I don’t give out numbers.”
He began tapping trees in February and the short season ended with very little syrup to sell this year. He reports other mainland maple syrup producers are also reporting a weak 2021 season.
While he operates the maple bush with spouse Donna (Swan) Bezanson, their 30-something daughter Terri and her carpentry husband Tim have joined the family firm in recent years.
Donna says “my great-great-grandparents started the business, it went down through the generations and now it’s us — and our daughter Terri (Scott) and her husband joined the operation in 2020.”
Their other daughter lives within view of the operation and Jim noted that she’s the one responsible for the social media presence of the business.
The maple bush operation is located in Central New Annan.
Swan’s Maple Syrup jugs, in Central New Annan near Tatamagouche. A one-litre jug is priced at $17.
In past years, prior to the pandemic, he had a large following in Halifax, and has personally delivered Swan Maple Products to the city.
“My wife is the sixth generation,” Jim tells The Notebook. “It will continue at least one more generation with my daughter, and then after that, it all depends on her kids if they want to take it over after Terri.”
Terri Scott is the seventh generation to join Swan’s Maple Products. The sugar bush entity was founded in 1870 by the Swan family. It is located near Tatamagouche.
“She has been helping us for years, but they just decided the last couple of years to keep the company going after we’re done with it,” says Jim, who is now 60.
Terri gets equity “and a lot of sweat equity, too,” the father adds.
“It’s my wife’s family company. They started back in 1870 making maple syrup on Grist Mill Road. Since then, I married in.”
Jim believes his wife as a Swan might have a relationship with Anna Swan, also from the community. Anna is known as the Tallest Girl in the World and featured as an attraction in New York at P.T. Barnum’s American Museum.
Jim says he is not certain of the precise lineage, but is fairly certain that the connection to Anna Swan exists.
Swan’s Maple Products. A one-litre jug costs $17.
The woods with the maple trees hosting a little brook out of the woods, and fields, and the tubing that crisscrosses throughout the woods is actually owned by Halifax entrepreneur Jamie Smith, whose family patriarch is Chester’s Hugh Smith, a former vice-president with Dexter Construction.
For land rent, Jamie in past years would get a plentiful supply of Swan’s Maple Products, which include the syrup in old-fashioned tin cans, the way it was canned generations ago. The Swan’s also make maple cream, which can be sliced off and added to a coffee, instead of a traditional sugar packet.
The Bezanson family has an assembly of three buildings to process the maple syrup.
Swan’s Maple Products. Please note the new phone number: 902-890-5534.
During the six weeks it takes to tap the sugar bush, Jim takes a “vacation” from his day job; he’s been at Agropur (formerly Farmers) in Truro for 40 years. His vacation is also the busiest time of the maple syrup processing period.
Question: As a maple producer, do you need to have a day job because you are only busy in early spring?
“This is just my hobby. I get six weeks of vacation a year, but I spend it all in the sugar woods.”
There are just three family members in the maple syrup operation, Jim, his wife, and now daughter Terri.
“We do it all within the family,” says Jim, who enjoys maple syrup with his meats. “It’s delicious with meats.”
At The Notebook, I like to add maple syrup to my first glass of water. “I never heard tell of putting maple syrup in water, before,” adds Jim.
Most of Swan’s Maple Syrup is sold at the Bezanson homestead, but in past years he also ships the product through Canada Post.
A slice of maple cream made by Swan’s Maple Products is ‘some good’ in a cup of coffee.
Typically, Swan’s produces 500 to 700 gallons of syrup a year, using hardwood from the maple bush to serve as the fuel to boil the tapped product.
Question: How did the winter-early spring 2020 season fare out for you?
Jim replies to The Notebook: “2019, we had the biggest production we ever had in our lives. Last year was down quite a bit from that record year, but it was still a good year.” In 2019, he produced 1,000 gallons, and last year it worked out to 750 gallons.
Besides canning the product — “very few people still use cans, it’s a pretty good seller for us” — the syrup is also bottled in plastic jars. A one-litre bottle costs $17.
Jim says there are 50 commercial maple syrup producers in Nova Scotia, “but everyone and their dog makes maple syrup” in backyard operations throughout rural Nova Scotia.
Acadian Maple Syrup in Upper Tantallon, is a large commercial producer, but doesn’t tap its own trees.
“They buy all their maple syrup from the producers in Nova Scotia. They don’t have the trees themselves.”
In addition to using Jamie Smith’s woodlot, Jim and family own 138 acres.
“We work out some kind of a deal for Jamie. It’s a good deal for everyone.”
The operation was incorporated in 1970. “Back then you made it for yourself, your family, and your neighbours.”
At one time, maple syrup was collected in tin cans tied to trees. Many, like Swan’s, now use a vacuum system to draw sap through the maze of tubing in the woods. Sophisticated machinery and stainless steel tubs 10 to 20 feet long hold the liquid in Jim’s building before it moves to the next building below.
I asked Jim how many gallons of syrup would come from the 10-foot long tank and he offers “12 gallons per tank.”
That is an indicator of how much water is removed from the thousands of gallons that come down from the trees each day.
There is a strong sense of efficiency resulting from Swam’s operation, and Jim quickly begins to tell me about the reverse osmosis process and vacuum system that saves both labour and product.
He says that “in the old days with no vacuum, you would not hear the vacuum hiss (signalling loss of product) from holes in the tubing.” He says his son-in-law can hear the hissing a hundred meters into the woods now and loss prevention can get underway.
Jim and Donna’s third building houses the reverse osmosis system where water is evaporated from the 6,000 or so gallons of liquid per day at the height of the season, and also houses an enormous evaporator fuelled by wood.
In the past, it took about 25 cords of wood during the processing season, but with reverse osmosis, it now takes about six cords, says Jim.
Sound easy? It’s not, Jim reminds me that the processing season is really only a blip in a much larger, year-long, process.
Swan’s taps 6,500 trees each year. Each year means drilling new holes using a battery-powered drill in freezing conditions, and inserting each tap called a spile, and tubing. At the end of the season, spiles and tubing are washed and cleaned for the next season.
Jim says there’s “30 miles of tubing at 12 cents a foot and upkeep on top of that.”
The business uses spring water off the mountain to do its washing. Jim says “the work never ends, it takes work all year round to produce the product.”
But Jim adds that when he saw Swan’s operation he said, “Oh, my God, I want this.”
It didn’t take long before he and Donna married that he became a part of the family business in 1980. He says “Donna’s dad was very particular on how maple syrup was made,” and that’s who he really learned from.
Swan’s Maple Syrup production logs
“Maple products are full of minerals (potassium and magnesium) and antioxidants are high,” he says. “Everybody appreciates maple syrup.”
It makes a great gift, and instead of a bottle of wine, he suggests bringing a bottle of maple syrup.
I asked Jim when he lifted his first pail of syrup and he pauses, saying “I can’t as far as I can remember — 12 or younger. I always loved doing this and I’ve been in a groove for 40 years now.”
The company website is www.swansmapleproduct.com
