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Birch Syrup Provides Sweet, Sustainable Business in the Boreal Forest

“If the trees are gone, then our livelihood is gone,” says Al McLauchlan, co-owner, along with his wife, of Rocky Lake Birchworks, an eco-friendly, family-owned and operated business that specializes in natural products harvested from the boreal forest. The boreal region of Canada stretches across more than a billion acres, and is one of the largest intact forest ecosystems on Earth. Pew’s International Boreal Conservation Campaign encourages a balance between development and conservation and works with the people who live there to achieve that goal. People of the Boreal is a multimedia project that tells the stories of those who have the most to gain or lose from decisions about how the region is managed. Learn more about Alan McLauchlan and his family business, and view the entire People of the Boreal series here: http://pew.org/1szM3eC TRANSCRIPT [Alan McLauchlan speaking] When we're in production there's very few people on the lake. So we're by ourselves. We get to enjoy the fresh air, the fresh water. We do our own cooking, we’ll bring food out or we’ll go out and we’ll catch fish. Just the fact of being back to nature and being in an area that’s very pristine. It's almost back to olden days where you're a pioneer on the land and you’re living off—which we are, we’re living off the land. I'm Alan McLauchlan. I live just north of The Pas, Manitoba, and our family produces birch syrup. I like to describe it as a molassesy taste. Other people have said a spice taste to it. It is a bit of a rare business. We have about 10 producers across Canada. It's a family business. My wife and I get to spend a month out in the bush. Our son comes out and helps us whenever he can. It's not without its challenges. I mean you're in the bush for a month without any cell service. No one knows what's going on over here. If you get injured then you fend for yourself. If you have a breakdown of some equipment you have to kind of figure out how to fix that yourself. Our busy season starts usually about spring break every year. We start to prep the site by going out and clearing the trees off the lines, putting lines back together that have been chewed by bears and squirrels and other critters. The tapping of the trees doesn't start until about the middle of April, the latter part of April, when we'll actually tap the trees, and the production usually starts at the first of May. So now we have 1,500 trees that are tapped up to the tubing, which protects the sap from the elements. So now you have a sap that comes out of the tree and it goes along a tube and it comes into the vacuum system and then over to our evaporator. It's filtered a number of times and it's not touched by human hands until the person opens the bottle and pours it on their pancakes or in their yogurt. Our company is definitely very sustainable and we have a great respect for the environment that provides us with our livelihood and we're very protective of the trees. When we take the sap we're only taking one percent of the sap out of the tree and we're not hurting the tree that way. Usually a birch tree will last 40 years, but some of these trees are over 100 years old and they're still producing the same as they did seven years ago when we started this business. We're always interested in seeing what the boreal can produce for us and we all know that there's a number of medicinals and foodstuffs that can be produced from the forest without harming the forest. So chaga is a mushroom that grows on the birch tree and we harvest that. We dry it and then we grind it up and make teas out of it. And we also mix it with different other products, for instance wild mint. We'll take the wild mint from the shores and dry it and then mix that with the chaga. As a family, we're very proud of what the boreal has given us. We've introduced a new product to Canada and we're very proud that the forest has given us the opportunity to do that. And it's through hard work and experimentation that we can do that. I mean we can come out here as a family, we can produce as a family, we can spend time together as a family. I think it's probably one of the most important times for us to be out here and just rejuvenate our whole souls, rejuvenate our whole body. We only eat when we're hungry. We sleep when we're tired. We get up with the sun. We go to bed with the sun. And when we get out of here it's just - ahhh - we can't wait till we get back here again. There has to be that interaction between people and the environment. There has to be a way for us to coexist. Are you going to get rich by doing something like this? Probably not, but at least you're going to get that opportunity to have the enjoyment that we do. You can come out, you can spend time in the bush. You can see animals, and you can produce a product that people like. Without the land we have nothing. So we need to protect those trees.