In Hallormsstaðarskógur, two thousand liters of juice from birch trees have been collected. The juice is drunk fresh or boiled syrup.
In the spring, when the trees are deciduous, they need to be transported to the branches. Every day, a full-grown birch tree transports hundreds of gallons of water out of the earth and, in fact, is slightly deformed by humans. Hallormsstaðarskógur is one of the largest birch forests in the country and nowhere can you find as many large and powerful birches. This is therefore an ideal place to collect birch sap.
Bergrún Arna Þorsteinsdóttir at Holt og heiður in Hallormsstaður says that when birch sap is collected, a hole is drilled in the tree and a hose is connected to the hole. One tree gave up to 8 liters per day. "We are only using trees for 4 or 5 days and then we close it. We are not using the same trees year after year. We give them a 2-5 year break before we start collecting from them again," says Bergrún.
The juice is considered healthy, but it contains minerals, antioxidants and sugars. "We boil birch syrup from the sap and work with MATÍS to bring it fresh to the market. There are 60 trees that we currently have under. And I don't think we're getting like 200 liters a day from these trees," says Bergrún.
This news was published on RÚV on the 3rd of June. Here you can see the video with the news.
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