Bill Vandenberg at Ryan’s Sweet Maple showed the members of the Lambton Life Skills Maple Syrup 4-H Club some old equipment that was used for making maple syrup.

He told the group how the pioneers used sumac wood taps or rhubarb taps. They would also have wooden buckets that would expand from the maple syrup and would make the bucket water-tight . Vandenberg added pioneers wooden buckets painted two different colors; one side red and the other side white. The pioneers would do this to help keep the sap from spoiling. 

The 4-H Maple Syrup Club got to see how maple syrup was made from start to finish learning which trees to tap, how to tap them, boil the sap down, and the uses for maple syrup. The members plan to either entering a maple syrup sample or some maple cookies into the Brigden Fair.

By Ivy-Jean Sawatzky