Our family/local sugar camps in WV.

[Maple Hobo]

Some on the details are a little off but for the most part... this is about our Sugar Camp :cool:

I was still rebuilding the lines (Spring 2010) in the woods so excuse the pile of tubes you see in front of the sugar camp...:emb:

PART 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJFGQLqhxwg

PART 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuM_GloHNkc

I'm the guy in the hair/beard nets with the rubber gloves in the canning section of part 2...:rolleyes:

[cvmaple]

Good videos. Has this farm always been tapped or is it a recent endeavour. I like Bucks attitude that he is a steward of his land and that he is preserving the past in his little museum. Looks like a nice farm even if it does have a lot of rocks!!! Thanks for posting. cvmaple

[Flat Lander Sugaring]

awesome
videos

[Revi]

Really nice video! Click on the link below to see ours. It was in the Maine International Film Festival and on Maine Public Television. My friend Nelson made it about our little sugaring operation. He tells a good story.

[Maple Hobo]

Good videos. Has this farm always been tapped or is it a recent endeavour. I like Bucks attitude that he is a steward of his land and that he is preserving the past in his little museum. Looks like a nice farm even if it does have a lot of rocks!!! Thanks for posting. cvmaple

This camp was in the family way back and had an old sugar camp that was all but on the ground (the clay/rock arch was holding the roof up.)
There were some glass slide photo negatives of the old camp someplace.
We have the old wooden barrel sled still they used for sap collection and its in pretty good condition. Ihave a digital copy of an old photo with it shown in it.

Buck resurected the camp around 7-10 years ago. I rebuilt the whole system last year (2010) into a wet/dry system with an RO etc.

The canning and final cookdown room was the origional part of the building that was stood back up. The roof timber is smoke stained from the old fires in the evaporator.

The old wood fire camp you see in it is Uncle Alberst's at the bottom of the cove.

There was at least 2-3 other historical sugar camps here in the cove. DeLauders (spelling) is still standing but all the homstead buildings are abandoned.

Sugaring is very traditional in the cove here. Highest concentration of Maples in West Virginia as I've been told by Jim Bowen the local Ranger.

[Maple Hobo]

Really nice video! Click on the link below to see ours. It was in the Maine International Film Festival and on Maine Public Television. My friend Nelson made it about our little sugaring operation. He tells a good story.

Very cool, I like your music.. Ping ping....lol

I was a little confused at the ladder, until I saw how flat you guys are.
We have it easier to flow but dragging things up the hill can get a little tough...lol

How big of a hole does the metal spiles take?

[Revi]

The metal spiles are 7/16ths, and the tubing taps are 5/16ths. They heal up in a year. We have good slope, but there wasn't any snow that year, so some of the trees were tapped the years before and the taps are about three feet higher. We just have gravity, so maybe we're tapping a little high to make sure it keeps flowing downhill.

Great video on your sugaring operation! I think it's the best I've seen. I liked when Buck said that it's God's land. I was just thinking about all the sugaring that has gone on around here and how we really only have the place for a little while. We're just caretakers for the time we're here, and then someone else takes over. The trees outlive us by hundreds of years.