Trip to Yukon, Part 4: Living with Birch Syrup.
If the first week of my Yukon adventure was on the road covering 1500 km of breathtaking scenery, the following week was entirely sedentary and tested my skills as a woodwoman, farmer and construction worker! Let me tell you that it's easy to feel unfit when you have to perform new tasks and embrace a new lifestyle. No doubt that the lifestyle of my hosts, Sylvia, Berwyn and their daughters is completely different from the vast majority of us!
Sylvia and Berwyn live in the middle of nowhere. Dawson, the only community worthy of the name in the area, is 125 km to the northwest. Once the motorway has left, it is necessary to cross another 18 km on a bad dirt road before arriving at home. With their daughters aged 9 and a half and 4 and a half, they live off the grid in a tiny house and operate a birch syrup production. To this day, the Yukon government still owns their land, but now that they have farm animals, they can apply for an agricultural permit to formalize ownership of their land. In the early summer, they started building a much larger new house. The process is slow because, like everything else, they do everything themselves and learn on the job.
The project started in the spirit of Berwyn, originally from Saskatchewan and a Yukon resident since 2000. If in Alaska, there are several producers of birch syrup in the Yukon, it was not done yet. When he came up with the idea, he was quickly told that it was impossible. Impossible is clearly not part of Berwyn's vocabulary since he acquired a forest map of the Yukon and marked all birch forests near Dawson City. The current location quickly established itself. A road was already opened by gold diggers, saving him a huge amount of work. The birch forest being on the hillside, gravity would be a major asset for collecting sap by tube. Moreover, vestige of the passage of glaciers or an ancient lake, the site is on a bank that rises up and skirts the river. The view opens up to miles around the surrounding mountains and valleys. Berwyn had undoubtedly found the perfect place to set up his birch syrup production!
Berwyn has certainly proven that nothing is impossible since the company is doing well and could certainly continue to grow. However, this is not the priority of the couple. For Berwyn and Sylvia, it is a lifestyle that allows them to live in accordance with their values and the self-sufficient existence they have chosen to adopt for themselves and their daughters. Living in nature and its goodness. An ideal that continues to make people dream of it!