2010 Maple Sugaring

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My interest in sugaring rooted from my youth when, as a family, we tapped a few trees and collected the sap into gallon milk jugs. We then boil the sap on our kitchen stove. In 2007 my wife and I tried a similar approach to sugaring which ended up not being very fruitful (it did make the house smell nice though).

In 2009 I decided that I would like to try to make enough syrup for our family for the year (~3 gallons), so I tapped 20 trees into buckets on my uncle's land (previously my grandparent's land on my mother's side) in South Royalton. After the first day of boiling on a propane cook stove and not producing any syrup, I decided that I needed to do something different. I spoke with a friend, Frank, and found that he had been wanting to sugar his land for years. We (mostly Frank) quickly put together an arch from an old coal furnace and used two of Frank's grandfathers old 2'x2' pans. Frank then put in another 20 taps on his property which took our total to 40 taps. We went on to make around 13 gallons of syrup with the help of some friends and family (Sam, Lyndon).

After the 2009 season was over, we decided that we needed to make some improvements to our sugaring facilities. We (Sam, Frank, Me) started by building a roof off of a shed on Frank's property which would be the shelter we would use to boil the sap for the 2010 season. We (mostly Frank) then build a new arch with a 2'x8' footprint. Frank then built new pans including a 4' flu-pan bent from stainless steel. We decided to improve our collection mechanism as well by using pipelines to pipe sap from 107 taps into barrels in three locations.

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