Vendor Spotlight: Palmer's Maple Syrup - A Sweet Tradition

With a lake view in the distance, surrounded by sugar maples, Palmer's Maple Syrup is an idyllic experience of a Canadian tradition near Port Stanley. Nearly 100 years ago, Brian Palmer's Grandparents purchased the family farm, and like many of their neighbours, they took to harvesting the sweet sap from the surrounding trees. Over the years, the family wasn't always in the Maple Syrup business- but since 1955, it's undoubtedly been a sweet success.

​Over the years, Palmer's has expanded and adapted to changing technology, now tapping about 4000 trees with kilometers of lines stretching the forests surrounding the farm - there are still a few trees with individual buckets - one conveniently just outside the pancake house so you can check the flow yourself during your visit.

Driving down Lake Line on a sunny weekend in March is a sure sign of spring, especially when the destination is a stack of fluffy pancakes slathered with liquid gold...but the real magic is coming to understand the hard work and dedication that goes into putting that syrup on the table and learning about the history of Maple Syrup production in Canada.

The season can range from later February into April, but it's rarely that long. Ideal flow conditions are just below freezing overnight and a few degrees above freezing with some sun during the day. As with many local crops, our understanding of them comes from the Indigenous People who would use syrup to cure meats, as a sweetener for bitter medicines and even as a trade item in the form of dried, portable sugar slabs.

Sap would be collected from the trees using wooden spigots. Once the sap was collected, it was stored overnight in clay pots or, in more recent times, metal buckets. The lighter water in the sap would rise and freeze. In the morning, the ice would be skimmed off the top and the remaining water removed through boiling, sometimes in hollowed logs, depending on the tools available. Hot rocks would be added to boil down the sap, which would take time and dedication. As you'll also witness, it's a dirty process that leaves a lot of sediment and ash behind, affecting the overall taste. 

​In time, the process moved to using immense cast iron kettles hung over fires - this is an iconic image that most of us have grown up experiencing as the visual surrounding the syrup-making process, but technology has, of course, provided better, cleaner, faster ways - and the modern set up inside Palmer's facility carries only one similarity - it's still wood fired.

With a lifetime of syrup in his veins and his coffee, it's easy to see this is one of the traditions he values in the production process.

As the season progresses, visitors can also see how the syrup changes throughout the season, with lighter syrup in the early season and darker in its later days. Maple syrup gets darker later in the season because as temperatures rise, natural microbes in the sap break down the sugar into simpler sugars that caramelize more readily during the boiling process (killing off those microbes), resulting in a darker colour and a stronger maple flavour; essentially, the longer the season progresses, the more these microbes have time to alter the sap's sugar composition, leading to a darker syrup. 

Maple Syrup comes in 4 grades that are the same across North America:
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Golden - delicate taste, clear and light enough that 75% or more light will shine through it.
Amber - has a rich taste and is light enough that 50-75% of light will shine through it.
Dark - robust taste, only 25-50% of light will shine through it.
Very Dark - has a very strong taste, and less than 25% of light can pass through it.

If you miss taking a trip out to the farm this season (don't!), you can also catch Palmer's at the Horton Farmers' Market on Saturday mornings- during the Winter at Horton season, they are part of our Market Table program, but they will be back in full force to celebrate Maple Fest at the market on April 26!

IF YOU GO

📍Palmer's Maple Syrup - 34308 Lake Line, Port Stanley
Saturdays and Sundays in March | 9am - 2pm

📍Maple Fest at Horton Farmers' Market 
Saturday April 26 | 9am - 1pm

Sarah Noble, Marketing and Communications Manager, St. Thomas EDC

​Sarah is Elgin County born and raised, now proudly waving the #StThomasProud flag. With a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Guelph, she’s passionate about empowering small businesses, arts, and tourism. A former entrepreneur, photographer, and certified Experiential Tourism Coach, Sarah blends creativity with strategy to help businesses thrive and craft unforgettable experiences. When she’s not championing local growth, you’ll either find her curled up with a her cats and a book, potentially enjoying a donut or tending to her gardens—because she knows all too well that life is best lived when it's full of stories, flowers, little sweet treats, and cats.