MajorWoodchuck
01-29-2023, 04:50 AM
It's going to be a bittersweet year for making maple syrup this year. This will only be our third year and we were really getting ramped up to make it even a greater family activity with a new 12 x 16 sugar shack on a concrete pad to get us out of the mud and a new Badgerland filter press to make finishing a pleasure. But God has other plans as he invited my boil buddy & Father in Law, Jack, to be with Him after a cancer diagnosis just 2 months ago. Jack loved going up north with me to the woods where he grew up 1-2 weekends a month for the last 30 years. Several years ago the ownership of the land passed from him to me and my family. Soon after we decided to try to tap trees and see if we could make our own maple syrup. Thanks to this website and tips from other posters we were able to avoid some of the starting pains others have gone through, and had a wonderful time making our first batches of syrup. Now we had to come up with a label to put on our collection of snapple jars filled with the dark sweet liquid. Why don't we just call it "Jack & Daniels syrup" my wife thought. There seemed to be someone from Tennessee that had a similar name but bottling a completely different product that inspired our label design. We were hooked on this new use for the woods at a time of the year when previously we only would come up to burn off the brush pile. After our first season was over all we could talk about was how we could make it better next year and be able to give away more. Jack loved being in the woods and he brought pleasure to the long days standing over the boiler panning the sap from this pan to that. After our first maple syrup season all our families wanted to be involved. The second season saw each of his children and their spouses going up with us for a weekend of in the woods collecting sap and boiling it down. We knew this was a great family bonding time that was going to continue so it was time to build a permanent boiling house to get us out of the mud. We poured the slab in July and had the walls up soon after. Together we built home made trusses from 5 layers of 1x8s from pallet lumber we had recovered. Jack didn't have the engineering mind I had been blessed with but loved being given a task to accomplish like cut 40 boards 89 inches long. He was such a a helper to me and even though he was 79 and not able to get up on a ladder anymore, I could not have built our shack without his assistance on the loader tractor picking up the trusses while I fastened them down.
Now that we have a great shack built I won't be able to share the joy of using it with him....but I am thankful for the memories made and the family tradition we started together. I know his spirit will still be with us so his name will continue to be on the bottle proceeding mine.
Here is a picture of 3 generations boiling together.
22795
Now that we have a great shack built I won't be able to share the joy of using it with him....but I am thankful for the memories made and the family tradition we started together. I know his spirit will still be with us so his name will continue to be on the bottle proceeding mine.
Here is a picture of 3 generations boiling together.
22795