Out in the crisp, late February air, Michel Gagnon tends to his maple trees, getting them ready for the coming syrup harvest. When the sap starts to flow in early March, Gagnon will have only about two months to collect his buckets — a gruelling job, he says, but one he has no plans of quitting.

The sugar bush is a Canadian institution rooted in First Nations’ tradition where people gather each spring to celebrate maple syrup. And nowhere in Canada is the sumptuous sap as culturally prominent as Quebec, where the industry produces about 70 per cent of the world’s supply — worth approximately $615 million annually.

Maple syrup has become big business, and small sugar shacks — the log cabins set in a forest of bucket-and-spile-tapped maple trees — are giving way to webs of vacuum tubing from tree to tree that can collect higher volumes of sap and great dining halls that can serve an expanding number of visitors.

“For me, it is tradition,” says Gagnon of the traditional sugar bush and shack. He founded his small operation (one of those featured here), La Belle Époque in Saint-Bernard-de-Michaudville, Que., more than 30 years ago, after a career as a police officer. “When people see those pipelines, they say ‘Oh, my grandfather never did it like that.’ ”

Of the 14,500 maple producers managed by the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, Gagnon is one of only a handful of small farmers, collecting his sap from just 300 to 400 taps. He produces about 150 litres of syrup per season — a drop in the bucket compared to some of his peers — and uses it at his 60-seat sugar shack that’s open for just March and April, serving classic dishes, such as crepes and sugar pie.

About 65 kilometres south of Gagnon’s small operation, a family-owned 73-hectare maple farm in Mont-Saint-Grégoire, Que., on Montreal’s south shore combines modern and traditional experiences. Érablière La Goudrelle (also featured here) produces 3,785 litres of syrup per season, putting it in the upper-middle range of all producers in the province, says owner Michel Gingras, who runs the operation with his two brothers.

It also has one of the largest sugar shacks, serving its syrup in an incredible 1,000-seat, five-room building. When Gingras’s grandfather started the business in 1948, many small farms sold maple syrup as a side business. Now, he says, the industry has changed. “Everything in the future is going to be bigger. It’s like corn farming. You can’t make money if you don’t have many trees.”

Nevertheless, Gingras is one of the few larger producers who still taps his trees with the traditional spile and bucket to preserve the look of the classic sugar shack.

“People come to the sugar shack and want to walk through the bush. If there were lines everywhere, they couldn’t walk. It’s much prettier with buckets.”

Originally published in Canadian Geographic’s April 2016 issue.