The Alberta Wildcraft Standard
Wildcrafted should mean more than a word on a label.
To us, transparency means being able to tell you what is in your product, where it came from, who harvested it, and what happened to it before it reached your hands.
We were there.
Wildcrafting isn't simply selling something that once came from the forest. It is knowing the land, finding the material, harvesting it responsibly, understanding what you collected, and carrying that knowledge through the making process.
We personally harvest our resin.
Ron and Maria personally collect the resin used in Alberta Wildcraft spruce gum. We travel to the forests, search the trees and harvest the resin ourselves.
We know where it came from.
We don't have to wonder who harvested a batch or what forest it came from. We know because we were there when it was collected.
We process what we harvest.
Raw resin arrives home exactly as the forest gives it to us. Bark, needles and natural debris are removed as we carefully clean and process the resin into gum.
We show the real process.
The snowy forests, resin-covered gloves, buckets, long drives and messy processing aren't hidden behind polished marketing. They are part of the story, and we share them.
“Hand harvested” tells you how something was collected. We believe transparency should also tell you who collected it.
If there's pine in the gum, we'll tell you there's pine in the gum.
Spruce gum has a long history, but real wild resin doesn't arrive with factory specifications. Different conifers produce resins with different characteristics, and we believe customers deserve to know what they're chewing.
Our current gum is made with a blend of spruce and pine resin that we harvest ourselves from Canadian forests.
We don't believe transparency means choosing the most marketable name for an ingredient. It means accurately telling you what is actually in the product.
If the resin blend changes, we tell you. If a batch behaves differently, we tell you. If the forest gives us something different, we don't pretend it came from a factory.
Every batch is different. That's the nature of wild resin.
Alberta Wildcraft Spruce Gum is made from real resin harvested from living trees in the Canadian forest. We are not working with a standardized, manufactured gum base, so we don't expect every batch to look, feel or chew exactly like the one before it.
Different trees. Different forests. Different seasons. Different resin.
Colour changes from batch to batch.
Wild resin can range through beautiful shades of gold, amber, red, deep brown and very dark tones. The age and condition of the resin, the trees it came from and the way that particular harvest behaves during processing can all influence the finished colour.
The firmness changes too.
Some harvests produce a noticeably harder, firmer gum while others create a softer, more flexible chew. That natural variation is one reason we describe our current batches to customers instead of promising that every tin will behave exactly the same.
The flavour has its own character.
The resinous, evergreen character can vary in strength and profile between harvests. Different trees, resin ages and growing environments can all contribute to the experience of a particular batch.
Even the raw resin looks different.
Some resin comes from the tree hard and aged. Some is fresher and softer. Some is clear and golden, while other pieces are dark, weathered and covered with bits of bark and forest debris. That's the raw material we actually work with.
We don't standardize the forest.
Our goal isn't to force a wild ingredient to become identical from batch to batch. Our job is to understand what we've harvested, process it carefully, and be honest with our customers about what that particular batch is like.
If this season's gum is softer, we'll tell you it's softer. If the next harvest produces a darker, firmer gum, we'll tell you that too.
From raw resin to something you can chew.
Spruce gum doesn't begin in our workshop. By the time we start processing a batch, a lot of the work has already happened out in the forest.
When you open an Alberta Wildcraft tin, we know who harvested your resin. We did.
The Alberta Wildcraft Standard
We don't expect customers to take the word “wildcrafted” on faith. These are the commitments we choose to attach to our name.
The resin used in our gum is personally harvested by the people behind Alberta Wildcraft.
If our gum contains spruce and pine resin, that is exactly how we describe it.
Our photos and videos show the real forests, real resin and real work behind the finished product.
We believe the transformation from raw forest resin to finished gum should be something customers can actually see.
A wild ingredient will not behave exactly the same every season, every forest or every batch — and we won't pretend otherwise.
To us, wildcrafting isn't simply a product category. It is the relationship between the person harvesting, the land, the raw material and the finished product.
Know what you're chewing.
Real Canadian tree resin. Wild harvested by us. Hand processed in Alberta. Made for people who want something very different from conventional gum.
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