The 11th Annual Business and Community Achievement Awards Gala was held recently.  We were the recipients of the 2016 Customer First – Business Award at the Business & Community Achievement Awards.   Donna Enright from Technicalities Plus, the award sponsor stopped by to deliver our award.  We were absolutely thrilled with the nomination and win.

We were unable to attend the gala but this is what the wonderful people at the Chamber of Commerce had to say:

Wintergreen Maple Products and Pancake Barn celebrates their 30th anniversary in business this year.  The 120 acre sugarbush, restaurant, retail store, catering and event centre has become a valuable part of the community.

Families enjoy the pancake weekends as a time to reconnect and enjoy delicious local food along with warm greetings from the Dawson family. (The free toys are a hit with the kids as well!)

Diane organizes and hosts the charity food festival and has enabled local producers a way to connect with customers while raising funds for local charities. 

Each year wintergreen expands its retail food offerings with innovative syrups and sauces along with preserves.

Many area youth have also grown up happily working for the Dawson's and still keep in contact from around the country.

The Dawson family are committed, enthusiastic members of the community and always strive to put customers first.

Early sugar makers went from tree to tree, with wooden buckets or firkins hanging from shoulder yokes, and collected the sap, which was strained through cloths and emptied into large storage barrels.  The settlers had large metal cooking pots to which to boil their sap;  the kettles were hung directly over the outdoor fires, suspended from poles.  In order to get the finest quality, lightest colour sugar, farmers began to use three kettles, so that the same sap would not be boiled and reboiled as new sap was collected.  The sap was first boiled in the largest kettle, then ladled into the middle sized kettle as it thickened; finally, in the smallest kettle, the thick golden liquid was tested by dropping onto cold metal, or by use of a vine twisted into a loop.  If, when the loop was dipped into the boiling liquid, a long ribbon or bubble could be blown, the farmer knew the liquid was ready to become sugar.  The pot was taken off the fire, the liquid was stirred until it began it crystallize and stiffen, and then poured into a storage bucket where the sugar hardened. 
 
Gradually, changes occurred in maple sugar production.  Metal spouts and buckets with lids replaced the wooden spouts and buckets, which had replaced hewn wooden troughs.  In the early 1800's some farmers began to enclose their cauldrons in brick arches or furnaces, which used less wood than an open fire, shortly thereafter large flat plans began to replace the kettles over the arches because they had larger surface areas exposed to the fire.  Sheds or sugar houses were built to shelter workers and protect the sap
 
The Dawson family learned the importance of lids on buckets in their sugar bush, early on in their collection of sap in the 1980's, when they noticed their dog Nelson happily and greedily lapping up the sweet sap from the buckets without lids, resulting in diarrhea for a few days after.  The lids also keep out the squirrels, bugs and bark and more importantly the rain, because you don't want any more water in the bucket than comes in naturally from the tree. Sap is a natural laxative, and is used by many spas as a cleansing treatment. In fact, farmers used it as a spring tonic to clean away the winters feeding of canned and jarred food.  So drink up!
 
Most syrup is made from the sap of the sugar maple (Acer saccharum), also known as the rock maple or hard maple.  In the summertime, the leaves of the maple tree absorb the sunlight and carbon dioxide, the roots absorb water, and from these the trees produce a simple sugar which is then converted to starch, and stored.  Prior to the maple season, the stored starch is changed to sugar, and that sugar is released in the sap when it flows.  Wherever it grows, the maple  tree is valued for its ornamental and shade characteristics, for its hard wood used in furniture, flooring and cabinetry, and as a great source of firewood.
 
Freezing temperatures, alternating with thawing, are necessary to create the pressure which causes the sap to flow when the tree is tapped.  This happens most often in the late winter and early spring.  Typically, the correct conditions occur when temps. drop below freezing at night and rise above 5 degrees during the day.  Calm wind conditions, and sunshine are known to contribute to good sap flow