Maple Sap Collectors

[Anchor Lead]

For some people, this freezing winter cold is good news. We’re talking about farmers who collect sap from mono maple trees. A wider gap between daily highs and lows means greater yields for them. Let's take a look.

[Pkg]

At an altitude of 200 meters halfway up Mount Baekam, tiny holes are drilled into trees and several hours have passed before droplets of mono maple tree sap are gathered at last. Roughly 500 milliliters of sap are collected from a tree a day. But it is half the amount gathered in previous years. For the collection of mono maple sap, the best daily temperature difference is 10 degrees. In particular, it's optimal if the weather is minus-five degrees Celsius in the morning and seven degrees Celsius in the afternoon. This year, the weather has remained warm with morning lows hovering above zero.

[Soundbite] Kim Dae-jung(Sap Collector with 23 years of Experience) : "The production is large only when a cycle of three cold days and four warm days is repeated, like in the past. The warm weather has a big effect on production."

Despite the drop in earnings, generous investments have been made in efforts to ensure hygienic production, such as the insertion of QR codes containing the personal information of collectors and the introduction of low-temperature pasteurization lines, which extends shelf life.

[Soundbite] Chung Dong-il(Namchon Association of Mono Maple Sap Collectors) : "It is purified and filtered for long-period preservation."

It is predicted that the collection of mono maple sap will soon begin at Mount Jiri and Mount Baekun with the real winter cold setting in.