Maple syrup a hobby made for self-isolating

Craig Bakay | Mar 25, 2020

Tom Revell loves his maple syrup . . . and he loves making it.

So, when a friend gave him an evaporator back in 2014, he couldn’t wait to fire it up behind his garage on Bauder Lane.

Fast forward to 2018. Revell was starting to get seriously into this new hobby and realized that some of his neighbours were interested as well.

“We went up to Perth and bought this unit,” he said.

The next thing you know, Revell was set up with neighbours Jamie Niedbala, Rob McDougall and Cory Sauve and they were running about 125 taps on 2 kilometres of lines, along with another 85 single taps.

“It’s set up for a sense of community,” he said. “I love the outdoors and I love syrup.

“Never will we make a dime out of it but I don’t care and I love it.

“It’s about big chilli suppers with friends and family.”

Self isolating due underlying health issues of his own, from his job where he works with kids with mental health issues, he’s more or less thrown himself into the syrup-making genre.

“I’ve been in here 12 days out of 13,” he said. “I’ve lost my internet because my kids are back home from university early.

“But I can come out here and listen to music, and even do a little socializing.”

“The socializing is nice too,” said Jamie Niedbala, who is one of Revell’s neighbourhood bandmates in this little endeavour. “I do love being in the outdoors and producing our own food.

“We use the syrup in a lot of baking, marinades, preserving and such.

“Plus it’s a bit of a throwback to earlier times and a sure sign of spring.”

His son, Aidan, who’s now in Grade 8, has seen the operation grow.

“I was pretty young, only four, when it started so pretty much then all I did was follow along,” he said. “But now I’m big enough to carry pails as we still use only buckets because our land is pretty rugged.

“But taking stuff from trees, watching the whole process and now we have it on our tables — It’s cool.”

Revell agrees.

“I built this for fun,” he said. “And it is.

“I love to look back and see kids in the wagon.”

They do sell a bit of syrup here and there (“we even have people coming and asking for it now,” he said) but any money they get goes to pay off the equipment they’ve had to buy.

“This year, we should have gotten all that money back,” he said. “Next year, we’ll be donating a lot of syrup to worthy causes.”