Hay River (May 16/05) - Spring is harvest time for Frederick Beaulieu.

For the last 20 years, Beaulieu has collected sap from birch trees and turned it into syrup.

"I just love doing it," says the 66-year-old.

The sap runs for roughly three weeks in spring. This year, Beaulieu began tapping the trees on April 24.

When the sap is running, Beaulieu leaves at 5 a.m. each day to drive to two stands of birches, 22 and 32 km south of Enterprise, where he taps about 60 trees in all. Birch is uncommon in the NWT, he notes.

It takes about three hours to gather the day's collection from tin and plastic cans hanging from spigots hammered into the trees.

The clear sap is brought back to Beaulieu's yard in Hay River, where he boils until it concentrates in a black, sugary sap.

"The hardest part is the boiling," he says. "You have to stay with it, if you want to get it right."

For every 30 gallons of sap, he gets two quarts of syrup. In all, Beaulieu made five gallons last year.

Beaulieu, a Metis originally from Fort Resolution, recalls he first tasted birch syrup when he was about seven years old. It had been brought back from the bush by some elders.

"It was beautiful," he says.

That was the only time he tasted the syrup until he decided to make it on his own.

Beaulieu, who uses the syrup on bannock and pancakes, describes the taste as something like burnt sugar, although he notes many people say it tastes like molasses.

He began making birch syrup when he lived in Fort Smith, where he was a stationary engineer with the territorial government until retiring in 1993.

Beaulieu is one of only a very few people still making birch syrup in the NWT. The only others he knows of are two relatives at Little Buffalo River.

"I'm trying to bring back the tradition," he says.