You’re staring at your waffle, and it’s asking for syrup. You head to the store with a few bucks in your pocket and grab a bottle, only to realize… it’s way more expensive than you thought. What gives?

Here’s the deal: real maple syrup isn’t just some sugary goop. It comes from trees, maple trees to be exact, and most of it comes from Canada. In fact, Canada produces about 75% of all the maple syrup in the world, and nearly all of that comes from one province: Quebec. So if you’ve ever had real maple syrup, there’s a good chance it started in a Canadian forest.

But how does syrup come from a tree? People collect something called sap. They drill a small hole in a maple tree, insert a little spout called a spile, and wait for the sap to drip out into a bucket or tubing system. This only happens in early spring, when the weather is cold at night and warmer during the day. That special temperature swing gets the sap moving.

Now here’s the wild part: it takes about 40 buckets of sap to make just one bucket of syrup. That’s because sap is mostly water. Syrup makers boil it for hours to thicken it into the sweet, sticky syrup we all know and love. It’s a lot of work, and if the weather doesn’t cooperate, there’s less sap, which means less syrup.

When something people want becomes harder to get, the price usually goes up. That’s called supply and demand. If there’s not much syrup being made (low supply) but lots of people still want to buy it (high demand), the price rises. Real maple syrup can cost over $10 for a small bottle, but here’s a fun fact: it’s actually cheaper in Canada than in other places, because Canadians don’t have to pay extra for importing it. People in other countries sometimes pay double the price for the same bottle. Lucky Canadians.

And now for the fun stuff:

Canada has a maple syrup reserve, basically a backup supply for when production is low. After a short season in 2023, the reserve hit its lowest level in over a decade.
Some syrup farms still use old-fashioned buckets, but many now use plastic tubes that stretch through the forest like spaghetti.
Maple trees have to be at least 30 to 40 years old before they can be tapped.
If you boil syrup too long, it turns into maple candy. Boil it way too long? You’ve got maple rock. Hope you weren’t planning on pancakes.

So the next time you pour maple syrup on your breakfast, remember, it didn’t come easy. It took trees, time, weather, and a whole lot of effort to get that bottle to your table.