White Meadows Farms Spring 2008 Sugaring-off

In eastern Canada spring begins with the cold nights and warm days that get the sap running. Sap runs in all kinds of trees in these conditions but only the Maple tree has a higher sugar content of 4%. The sap is boiled off till the syrup remains. The Maple syrup is produced in four grades; light, medium, amber, and dark.
The sugaring off process was first taught to the early pioneers by the people of the First Nations. In this VR we see how the early pioneers used a three kettle method of boiling off the sap. Sap was place in the first kettle and as it thickened it was ladled into the second kettle and later into the third kettle. The pioneers would move into the sugar bush for the sugaring off season and produce maple syrup for the coming year. This would be their only sugar supply in a hard life. It takes 40 litres of sap to boil down to 1 litre of maple syrup. Plastic tubing attached to the spiles and modern evaporators make the process much less labour intensive today.
The White Meadows is the Niagara region's largest maple syrup producer and a third generation family farm. Operated by the Bering family with over 4200 taps in 2007 White Meadows Farms welcomes visitors all year round. The sugaring season begins in late February and ends in late March or early April. White Meadows Farms have displays, activities, and demonstrations explaining this tasty wonderful process.

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USA-Canada / Canada-Ontario

Lat: 43° 5' 34.8" N
Long: 80° 19' 25.2" W

Elevation: 511

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: High. Pinpoints the exact spot.

A Canon EOS 5D with a Canon 16-35mm L series lens set at the 16mm setting was used on a Manfrotto 303SPH head. The cubic panorama was stitched together with RealViz Stitcher V4. This panorama was shot with available light at 1/200 of a second @ f 11 in Raw mode with an ISO of 100 on the Canon EOS 5D. I processed all the images in the RAW conversion software Capture One Pro V3.7 from Phase. The images are then stitched together in RealViz Stitcher and the QuickTime panoramas are then converted from the flat tiff images