Our Story
We're Sapsuckers™. Born Canadian, Maple to the Core.
It started on Family Day weekend in 2025, with one backyard tree and four litres of the best maple syrup we've ever tasted.
It started with our southern neighbour.
Not the way you'd expect. It started with two scared Canadian kids who came to me and asked: Dad, are we really going to be the 51st state?
I didn't have a great answer. But I looked out the back window at our 50-year-old Sugar Maple, and I thought — that tree has been standing in this yard longer than most countries have had their current borders. Maybe the answer isn't out there. Maybe it's right here.
So we tapped it.
That Family Day weekend in February 2025 — bundled up, breath steaming, the whole family figuring it out together — we tapped that old maple and waited. Over the next five weeks, it gave us about 220 litres of sap. We burned one batch (lesson learned) and boiled the rest down to four litres of the most incredible syrup we'd ever tasted. The kids weren't scared anymore. They were too busy watching sap drip into a bucket and asking when we could boil it.
Since then, I've learned that most sugar makers recommend no more than two taps on even a big backyard tree. So ours gets two now. I'm still learning too, and that's half the fun. We'd rather get a little less syrup than hurt the tree that started all of this.
It became our Family Day tradition. A real one. Ours.
By our second season, in 2026, half the neighbourhood wanted in. But here's the thing — there were no kits out there for someone who just has one tree in their backyard. Nothing designed for a Canadian family who just wants to try it. So I made them myself. Sourced the equipment, put together the kits, handed them out to friends.
That's when I realized — every Canadian deserves this. From Cape Race to Nootka Sound. The feeling of tapping into something that is genuinely, deeply, beautifully ours.
Then the White House posted a video. An American playing up here in Ottawa looked into the camera and called us sapsuckers. It was meant as an insult. Ottawa did the right thing and sent him home.
We thought it was the best name we'd ever heard.
Sapsuckers™ was born. Because a sapsucker is a woodpecker that drills into trees to drink the sap — nature's original maple tapper. And because if the neighbours to the south want to call us that, we'll put it on a tee, slap it on an apron, print it on a hoodie, and wear it with everything we've got.
That's what this brand is. Maple syrup kits for your backyard. Gear for the dock. Apparel that doesn't apologize for being Canadian. All of it made to order — fresh, just for you, no waste.
Our Home Maple Syrup Kits are ready to order now, so you can have your own Family Day weekend and your own batch of something that tastes like this country.
We're also a proud associate member of the Ontario Maple Syrup Producers' Association. Between 2016 and 2021, the number of Ontario farms tapping maple trees dropped by 18%, according to Statistics Canada. We want to help change that. Every kid who watches sap drip into a bag in their own backyard could be the next generation of Ontario maple producers. And we hope every family that taps a tree ends up at a local sugar shack too.
We're proud to be Canadian. Stubbornly, happily, dock-life, maple-tapping, sorry-not-sorry, 100% Canadian.
If they want to call us Sapsuckers — good. We'll take it.
— Tim
Founder, Sapsuckers™
Canada 🍁
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