About Us

Get to know the Garland family and our passion for all maple/sugar products. Also check out our appearances in the Ottawa Citizen. To see our first press release Click Here, and another press release Click Here. You can always come visit us at the Garland Sugar Shack in Vars or come see us at the Ottawa Farmer's Market on Sunday's or the Main Farmer's Market on Saturday's and come say hi.

Our maple syrup production that consists of 3,000 taps and expanding, all started like most producers with a few hundred taps with buckets and boiling on a box stove. Our family operation now consists of a 4'x16' wood-fired evaporator with sap collected from 2 different bushes of a mix of soft and hard maples with the help of a pipeline and vacuum pump. The sap is collected in early spring (mid March to mid April), and is very thin, almost like water, but contains about 2 percent sugar (sucrose). While it may yield sap for 100 years or more, a tree is usually not mature enough for permanent tapping until it reaches 45 years old. One tree might yield 10 gallons over the course of four weeks. The sap is boiled to drive off the water, and eventually you get maple syrup.

As a compliment to the production of maple syrup, we've added transformation of our liquid gold to make these lip-smacking products: Maple butter, candies, jelly, sugar, popcorn, tarts, cones and cotton candy. This you MUST try!

A Little History About Maple Syrup

Canada makes more than 80 percent of the world's maple syrup. Long before European settlers arrived, Canada's Native peoples were making a dark sugar from the sap of maple trees. In the spring, they made a diagonal incision in the trunk and inserted a strip of bark at the lower end of the cut to serve as a spile. The sap was collected in birchbark containers and then poured into hollowed-out logs. Rocks heated in a fire were placed in the sap to heat and evaporate it. Slowly the sap became syrup and eventually sugar. Early settlers learned from the Aboriginals and began making maple syrup to supplement their diets. They used spiles and wooden pails to collect the sap, which was boiled in the open in iron kettles. The art was handed down from generation to generation and is now part of our heritage. Over the years, the methods and equipment have greatly improved. Today, maple syrup production flourishes on a number of Canadian farms.