They have become the first sign that spring is just around the corner. Long before the first crocuses start appearing on Parliament Hill and the first pallets of annuals start popping up in the box store garden centres, blue buckets suddenly begin to sprout on the trunks of maple trees in the village of Navan.

This year, they began appearing on March 1. First in front of a house on Delson Drive. Then in front of several more houses on Delson, Villeroy Crescent, Tyburn Court, Forest Lea Drive and Loeper Street.

A majority of the trees are owned by a group of friends who call themselves the Navan Tappers. Their clubhouse is called the “Navan Tappin’ Shack”, which doubles as their sugar shack where they boil down the maple sap into delicious maple syrup.

Last year, the six friends collected over 400 litres of maple sap from the more than 100 trees they collectively tap on their properties. They then turned the 400 litres of sap into 100 litres of syrup.

“We had perfect conditions last year,” says the group’s founder and the man who built the Tappin’ Shack, Luc Picknell. “We had so much syrup we were using it to make BBQ sauce, pickled onions...we even used it to flavour vodka.

It’s hard to tell from one year to the next how well the sap will run. The best conditions for collecting sap are freezing nights with temperatures around -7°C, and sunny, mild days above freezing, ideally between 4 and 7°C. Those were the conditions between March 7 and March 10 and the group managed to collect over 40 gallons of sap, or about 180 litres.

What the rest of season has in store, only Mother Nature nows.

But maple syrup is only the byproduct of what Picknell and the rest of the group that includes Mathieu Boulianne, Charles Simard, Kyle Edwards, Tim Bernardi and Dan Reid, see as the perfect March pastime.

“There’s not really a lot to do in March,” says Picknell. “Boiling the sap down to syrup has gotten to be a nice tradition and a great way for everyone to get together every weekend.”

While most residential maple syrup productions consist of little more than a large pot of maple sap boiling over a propane burner, the set-up in The Tappin’ Shack would rival any commercial sugar shack.

On a good weekend, the boys will boil the sap around the clock, with one member often volunteering to take the overnight shift.

The process has even become a family affair with their spouses and older children helping out with the production process and the bottling.

The group has a new toy this year which they are excited to try out.

“We found an old-fashioned canner so we can can it rather than bottle it,” says Picknell.
Weather or not the end product will taste better coming out of a can rather than a bottle, is another mystery the gang is looking forward to find out.

One thing is certain, the group of six friends will have no shortage of maple syrup to spread on their pancakes this year, while their friends and extended family members could end up being the happy beneficiaries of any extra.