All members would like to thank Keith and Lorna Crowe for all of their work for the Nova Scotia maple industry over the years and to congratulate them on being the first inductees into the Nova Scotia Maple Hall of Fame. The Nova Scotia Maple Hall of Fame has been created to honour the leaders in this province’s sugar making industry. The induction of Keith and Lorna occurred at the MPANS annual general meeting on January 20, 2007 held in Springhill at the Dr. Carson and Marion Murray Community Centre in Springhill.
Keith Crowe is a fifth generation sugar maker. His family has made maple in ten different sugar camps in the area of East Mapleton for over 150 years. He has been a maple producer himself since 1952. His operation started out with 775 trees tapped on one lot, and a camp about a mile back in the woods. A new camp was built road side to take advantage of the modern convenience of electricity in 1976. The operation has since grown to approximately 27,000 trees tapped, on two lots. During this time, Keith has also been a maple equipment dealer and has been instrumental in also helping his maple producing colleagues grow their operations. Many changes in technology have been incorporated in their operation over the years, at times in a guinea pig scenario, such as various tubing systems, oil fired evaporators, stainless steel equipment, vacuum systems, forced draft wood fired evaporators, automatic drawoffs, reverse osmosis, & air injected boiling pans. In an average season, approximately 2500 gallons of syrup are produced and ends up being shipped to areas all over the world in the form of syrup, butter or cream. Both Keith and Lorna have served the Maple Producers Association in various executive capacities over the years and remain active in Association activities.”
Lorna and Keith were married in 1961. They have 3 children. Lyndon, the eldest, and his family lives on the farm in East Mapleton.