The Nor’wester Maple Company’s stand of about 1,400 maple trees is barely enough to feed Thunder Bay. The trees are located in a fairly inaccessible forest in Neebing near Cloud Lake, and about a quarter of the maple trees are red maple, and three quarters are sugar maple.
The five owners, Sean Murray, David Bates, Cale Leeson, Abe Zettek and Aaron Keffer have their work cut out for them when tapping season comes around. The 1,400 trees are tapped and connected to a network of pipelines totalling 30,000 or 40,000 feet. “It’s not little buckets on trees anymore,” Murray says, “the sap drips down the line, gravity takes that sap downhill into our collection tanks.”