In addition to a traditional meal and maple taffy, a host of activities await you!
A sugar shack day filled with family activities.
Come and visit our Sugar Village and its activities for the whole family: visit the sugar shack and its kettle, walking trails, general store, farmhouse, antique buggy ride in the forest, train ride on rails, mechanical bull, merry-go-round, horse-drawn carriage and bumper car.
Activity tokens – $2.61 plus tax. Non-exchangeable, non-refundable. Schedule may vary according to weather.
Did you know that
Who discovered the secret of maple water?
Long before the arrival of European settlers in North America, Amerindian tribes are said to have discovered how to collect sap from maple trees and turn it into syrup. Some say that in spring, a little squirrel climbed up a tree trunk, bit a branch and started drinking. Then, a Native American at the bottom of the tree looked up at him and wondered why, since a spring of fresh water was flowing nearby. He imitated the squirrel by making a slit with his knife… What a surprise! Until then, his tribe had only found sugar in wild fruit. And here was a tree crying crystal tears of sugar.
From this point onwards, the Amerindians began tapping the sugar maples with a hatchet and hanging containers made of bark to collect the maple water. Then, when our people arrived in America, the natives introduced them to the virtues of maple water. They showed them how to use it. From gathering it to cooking it to obtain different types of products such as maple syrup, maple taffy and maple sugar.
How is maple water produced?
In spring, when temperatures warm up, the water in the tree rises, creating pressure inside the tree. As a result, cold nights, followed by above-zero days, favor the flow of maple water. If it doesn’t freeze at night, the water won’t run the next day.
Our ancestors improved maple water collection techniques with crankshafts, flashlights and metal buckets. A hole was drilled with the crankshaft. Maple water dripped from the flashlight into the bucket. Harvesting was done with the help of horses. They pulled a sled with a large barrel to empty the buckets.
Today, picking is automatic, thanks to a system of blue tubes connected to the kettle. The latter contains an evaporator, fed by wood logs, where the maple water is transformed into syrup. Thus, it takes 40 liters of maple water to make one liter of syrup. In short, the longer you boil, the more water evaporates, and the end result is maple sugar.
Finally, if you stop the evaporation in time, you get maple taffy. It’s an unmissable sugar shack tradition. And finally, we spread the taffy on snow. Use a stick to roll it up and enjoy it like an ice lollipop.
At Chalet des Érables…
On our 40-acre property, there are 3,000 maple trees with a total of 6,000 taps, producing 72,000 liters of maple water for 3,600 canes of maple syrup.
A sugar shack… What an amazing sugar shack !
Source: Wikipedia