A Day at Domaine Valga

 25th September 2022

Miraculously, the sun is shining this morning. The Mexicans have returned for breakfast and if you weren't awake by 7.00 am, they took care of any need for an alarm clock.

A hearty breakfast was served, which was very much like a full English breakfast, after which a bit of a walk outside to digest it all seemed like a good idea.

There is no wind and great reflections off the lake, so it was a chance to get a few photos.

Two of the chalets across the lake

This morning we are going to have a tour of a maple syrup factory which is operated by the family that owns and runs Domaine Valga. They are a pretty incredible family as the have built all of the buildings themselves that now constitutes the accomodation. Timber was sourced locally and milled through their own portable sawmill.

Two years ago they built the factory to make maple syrup and fitted it out with modern machinery.

Carole and Sharon outside the factory building

To produce the syrup they tap 4000 trees on the other side of the lake, each tree tapping spout is connected to a tube that feeds into a main feeder which feeds a pumping station that pumps the accumulated fluid tapped from the trees under the lake into holding tanks at the factory. At this point the fluid tapped from the trees contains around 3 % sugar. They have 1.4 km of tubing involved in this exercise which all has to be flushed and cleaned after the tapping is completed. They tap the trees for only 4 weeks a year.

To tap the maple tree they drill a hole 50mm deep into the trunk to insert the spout connected to the nmain line with a thin tube

Once the tree fluid is in the factory it is run through a reverse osmosis membrane and is concentrated up to 14 to 18% sugar. This concentrate is stored in a refrigerated tank that is kept at below 5 C. 

Next process is to concentrate the sugars though heat exchangers, and pans heated by a wood fired boiler. The ultimate sugar concentration is 66.6 %, and is the final maple syrup product ready for sale.

The syrup is concentrated in this intergrated, woodfired boiler and heat exchange unit, with the fill concentration achieved by boiling in pans after the preheating.

The family dog, Adele, was supervising the briefing

A multi plate filter unit is used to clarify the syrup before it is ready for shipping, or bottling. The bulk of the output is sold to the Maple Syrup Federation, who blend syrups from members and bottle to sell to the market in an effective cartel.

The "sugar shack" house and interesting collection of stuffed animals.

Beavers

A mink

A Marten

The maple syrup business is undergoing and expansion program with another 3000 trees about to be added to their capacity.

After the plant visit, John and I went for a walk around the lake to have a look at the Chalets, which are also owned by the family and let out unserviced. There are 3 of them, each with water access and a small rowboat. They would be great for family groups or a larger group of friends.

Adele joined us for our walk

One of the Chalets

There were a few areas along our walk where we thought beavers may have active, but we didn't see any, just evidence of where they had been.

The owner warned us before we went on our walk not to go past certain boundaries on their property as their neighbours were actively hunting at the moment. We thought he was being a bit overcautious until later in the afternoon we saw a guy in hi vis gear with a rifle at the top of a hill on the road, and there was plenty of subsequent gunfire.

Lunch was provided in the dining room, with only 6 of us there, as the others had checked out or went exploring with a boxed lunch. It was simple spaghetti bolognaise, but very tasty.

John and Sharon decided to take it easy for the rest of the day, whilst Carole and I headed off to see a canyon and waterfalls at Canyon des Portes de L' Enfer (Hells gate Canyon). It was about a 45 minute drive on a combination of dirt and bitumen roads in the direction of Rimouski.

It was well worth the trip and whilst we did not complete the final part of the hiking train down into Hell's Gate Canyon (it was the 300 steep steps that discouraged us), we did see all of the other highlights

Very impressive at the beginning of the trail are the Grand Sault Falls.

Rapids at the top of the falls

Grand Sault Falls

From here we took a short drive to access the next walking trail which takes you to the Hells Gate Canyon and a suspension bridge across the canyon. The trails are mostly timber steps and board walks with lots of elevation changes, making it a good walk to get the heart beating.

At last the Autumn colours are really starting to transform the landscape

The scale of the  suspension bridge came as quite a surprise. it was a much more substantial structure than I was expecting.

We walked across the suspension bridge and got great photos of the canyon

The depth of the canyon is hard to capture in a photo, but it was a very long way down

The 300 steps down to the canyon floor

We didn't see much wildlife on our walk other than this squirrel trying to work out how to get into the bin

Our last attempt to see some wildlife was a short diversion onto a marsh track where there was a promise of perhaps seeing beavers or a moose. None of which eventuated, we just saw another swamp.

It was on our drive home from this visit that we came across the hunter on a backroad near our accommodation. He was standing in the middle of the road with a rifle and his ute parked about 50 meters away in the middle of the road.

We arrived home safely and had a couple of well earned drinks before dinner. Once again, tonight we were the only non French speaking guests, but we did find a few to talk to over dinner who spoke quite good English.