Sugar Shack

[Ryan Browne]

Yikes, Chris!! Glad you got it fixed up and didn't lose any sap.

We cooked for the first time today. Spent yesterday afternoon and this morning cleaning out my 4x14 evaporator. Pumped some sap and had a fire going by about 2:30. It was a great day. Everything went without a hitch and I had lots of great help, plus it was absolutely perfect weather. Everyone was pretty stoked to see it fire up the first time this season. In the end we cooked for about 4.5 hours. Cooked about 800 gallons of sap and drew off about nine gallons of syrup (that's not the accurate ratio because of how much sugar is now in the pans). Burned half a cord of wood or maybe a little more.

 

[kingOFgEEEks]

Had a few warm days, so I finally got enough sap for another boil. I almost burned my pan when it started making syrup, and I wasn't paying attention. I caught it in time, and had a good ~2 gallon drawoff before running out of sap and shutting down:

 

[Ryan Browne]

The sap ran really hard yesterday afternoon. Ran a gallon per tap in about 4 hours. Then it only got to 27 last night, so it didn't take long for the sap to start running this morning. Here's what it looked like before I went in for lunch. This is from about 180 taps. There's 100 more on the other side of the woods going into another tank.

If this keeps up I think we'll collect about 500 gallons of sap by sundown. Cory, who just finished firing the cooker in the pictures is taking a half day off tomorrow, so we're gonna cook all afternoon. Hopefully one or two of my neighbor bring by some sap too.

 

[Ryan Browne]

Looks like another big day in the woods. Started the fire at 11:30 after moving around some firewood. Probably wipe out about 1400 gallons of sap by sundown. It's really wonderful when we get a good sap run like this. There's a lot of set up work to get to this point and you never know how much syrup you're gonna make. After today's run we should be in the ballpark of 1/3 of a "average" crop. Not quite home free, but the forecast looks good, and it's excellent to be off to a great start.

 

[Ryan Browne]

Here's what I'm working on right this second. I'm pumping the sap from this tank in the woods up to the tank that gravity feeds my evaporator.

The pump is a 20cc Mitsubishi 2-stroke. Running Schaeffer 7000 at 40:1.

 

[Ryan Browne]

Finished up about an hour ago. Cooked for 7 hours. Made about 32 gallons of syrup.

 

[kingOFgEEEks]

I'm done for the year. Cooking off the sweet that was in the evaporator. I made a few pounds of maple sugar, for fun. That's amazing stuff:

 

[RI Chevy]

Cool! Where are the free samples? LOL

 

[kingOFgEEEks]

Cool! Where are the free samples? LOL

Mini GTG at my apartment house to load and haul the rest of the ash home. Free samples for workers!

 

[RI Chevy]

Lol. [emoji106]

 

[Ryan Browne]

The weather changed so rapidly here from full on winter to summer that syrup season already feels like a long time ago. We had a great year here and ended up bottling about 235 gallons of syrup. A record for us. A friend of a friend works for a little public radio show and he came out and did an assume little video of our operation to put on their Facebook page. Check it out.

https://www.splendidtable.org/story/family-farm-continues-sweet-tradition-of-making-maple-syrup

 

[RI Chevy]

Cool video! Thanks for sharing.

 

[RI Chevy]

There is a place near me and one in ME, both named Sugar Shack. Lol
I imagine it's a pretty popular name for these. Lol

 

[Ryan Browne]

There is a place near me and one in ME, both named Sugar Shack. Lol
I imagine it's a pretty popular name for these. Lol

Pretty much all of them are called the sugar shack, or just the shack, at least to those of us that are lucky enough to spend time in them. I guess in Quebec they call them cabanes a sucre. Maybe the sap shack gets used too. Though, obviously some are much less shack-like than what @kingOFgEEEks and I are working with.

 

[kingOFgEEEks]

Pretty much all of them are called the sugar shack, or just the shack, at least to those of us that are lucky enough to spend time in them. I guess in Quebec they call them cabanes a sucre. Maybe the sap shack gets used too. Though, obviously some are much less shack-like than what @kingOFgEEEks and I are working with.

At least mine has walls now...

 

[Ryan Browne]

At least mine has walls now...

Yeah, I could sure go for some of them!

 

[kingOFgEEEks]

Yeah, I could sure go for some of them!

The wind blows so much here that you can't keep a decent boil going without it.