One day without power costs Quebec maple syrup farmer $12K

In a matter of 24 hours, Morgan Arthur lost $12,000.

The ice storm that swept across southern Quebec last week caused the maple syrup farmer to lose power.

"It's a significant part of our revenue because our business is literally six weeks," he said.

Twelve-thousand dollars is the equivalent of 300 gallons of maple syrup, which Arthur says he lost on day one of the two-day outage.

To make maple syrup, tree sap is put through a reverse osmosis unit to remove most of the water, which requires a lot of electricity.

Arthur says he also needs power to boil the sap in an evaporator—a risky process the outage could've compromised.

"If it gets warm, it will spoil and be worth nothing," he said.

Arthur says the situation could have been worse if it weren't for a helping hand.

His neighbours lent him six power generators, allowing him to turn some of his taps back on during the second day of the power outage.

"If we didn't have the generators, we would've had no sap intake. It's essential. You need power," he said.