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About Us
Swan's Maple Products History

James Lawson Swan started it all; Around 1870 James started making maple syrup for his family at the family homestead.
All of his sons (Wilfred, Eugene, and Charlie) helped out making and continued making maple syrup on their own even after James's death.

James's son Charlie bought the property up the road and that is the property where our sugar woods is now located. Charlie then sold this property to his nephew James Gratto Swan.

In 1971 Jim and his brother Alec (Alexander) started tapping on the new sugar woods. The sap was collected in sap cans and carried to the camp in milk cans. (Much fun was had by all. *wink wink*) All of the family helped out and the sap was boiled on a flat bottom pan and the syrup was finished in a cast iron pan.

In 1974 Jim and Alec (Alexander) bought a Juttress evaporator and put up their first pipeline. That evaporator only processed about 20 gal per hour and they only kept it for a year.

In 1975 they bought a used small brothers evaporator (The Lightning) from Keith Crowe in Mapleton. This evaporator model ran 120 gal per hour.

They also built a new camp at the bottom of the sugar woods and added more trees onto the tubing. Also they bought some Stainless-Steel tanks from the Tatamagouche Creamery.

In 1981 the camp was moved to down across from Jim's House so there could be power hooked up and so sap from another slope could be run to the camp.

In 1988 when Alec died, his sons ran the woods with Jim(James Gratto) for one year and then sold out their half to him.

This was when Donna (Jim's youngest daughter) and her husband Jim Bezanson started helping to run the sugar woods. Shortly after that, they added two stainless-steel cheese vats from Farmers Cheese in Truro for sap Storage. (1600 gals. each).

In 2000 we built a new sap house, and in 2003 we bought a Waterloo Small Evaporator (Hurricane Arch with Piggyback pan system) from Wes Burton's widow from Margaree, Cape Breton Island.

After the 2004 season we tore down the sugar camp and built a new camp to fit the evaporator. We have had great luck with it (It processes about 350 gal per hour.) We are now beginning to expand and add more taps to our operation.

We have another 2300 gal. tank ready to be used for sap storage when needed and we are presently running 5600 taps.

The end of 2006 James Gratto Swan passed away, and the operation passed to Donna and her husband Jim.

 

 
 
   
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