My Intro to Sugaring

[tessiersfarm]

The first year I did sugaring my 3 year old daughter helped out. I bought her some snow shoes from LL Bean and paid more for them than all the rest of my equipment together. I carried her more than she walked. To see a three year old on snowshoes is priceless. Our first boil was Friday Night in a 16 quart kettle on the kitchen stove. Saturday morning I woke to a three year old with pajamas under a winter jacket with our syrup in her pocket wanting to go to the resturaunt (She knows I don't cook) for pancakes. I was hooked. We now have a second daughter who loves to help and it has really become a Family Affair.

[Clan Delaney]

THAT is priceless.

[Buckeye mapler]

I am yet to have my first season on my own as I plan to help out this year at another set up to get the feel. I have told my kids ages 2,4,5,6,and 8 that we will be making syrup soon and they are excited. They ask "when" all the time. No one in my family has ever done this, but I know if I establish a good foundation that it will go on for generations. I am praying I can get my dad interested enough to get involved. He retires in 2 years. He is interested enough to see what he can do about fabricating a finish pan for me, hopefully he will want to see how to use that thing too!

[Haynes Forest Products]

BUCKEY I think you need an outside hobby. With that said they will love the prosses get some small pails and get them involved. The great thing is getting them all piled in the truck and get to gathering. Man your going to lose alot of hammers in the woods GOOD LUCK

[dano2840]

you guys are lucky, ive put up all my wire pipe and the laterals that are up so far by my self and im dont have any one who is going to help me my step bros, will help occasionally
my uncle has been helping me on the supplies and equipment end though which i appreciate alot, but my sugar house is 250 ft away from rt 100 which has about 5000 cars go through it in a day, so i will have tourists for company in the day, and friends that will stop by, but thats about it, my moms boy friend is a farmer and used to sugar but just didnt have the time to do it any more, my uncle told me the other day that as it gets closer to sugaring season he will get more excited, and i wont be able to get him out of the sugar house but i have yet to see it and doubt it will happen, but u never know w/ him so we will see

[3% Solution]

dano,
Got to get yourself a lady friend that wants to be with you all the time!!!
There's your help!!!!
Hey, your uncle may come around, you never know, he's got investment now!!!!!
Show him the ropes, let him do some stuff and he'll get caught up in the sickness!!
Stop thinking negative, be positive!!!!
You wanted all this, nobody twisted your arm, you brought it on yourself!


Dave

[dano2840]

he taught me the ropes hes got 600 taps himself
hes very excited to see me sugaring and is helping me out in every way he can and i can call him w 200 questions and he wont mind answering every one of them. i wouldnt be where i am if it werent for the people behind me, its my moms boy friend who hasnt gotten excited yet
i like the whole thing im just saying those all nighters w/ no one there is the only downside.
if i didnt like it last year i wouldnt be going from 68 taps to 600!
i cant get enough of it its all i think about, they say a man thinks a bout a woman either every 2 seconds or every other thought i think about sugaring about every 3 thoughts, or every 5 sec, but i think about sugaring w/ girls all in the same thought every 10 seconds:)

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Dano,

County your blessings as most on here don't have someone to spot them the money to buy a new RO or tubing tools etc. You may not have someone to help but most on her could only ever dream of an RO or some of the other things you have, especially at 16.

[3% Solution]

Dano,
They'll be around!
Your excited right now,because your doing all this stuff to get ready.
Easy lad, easy!!
Now I was talking about one "girl" and you pop in "girls"!!!
Nothing wrong with that!!!!
Invite one over to help you out!!
Ok, this is going down hill on my end kinda quick!!!!!
As I said, you may be surprised, this year you may have quite a bit of help.
Your not a "backyarder" anymore, you've hit the big time.
With all that steam going across Rt. 100 you may get a ticket for obstructing the movement of traffic!!!
Oh that's good, cars will have to stop, then they'll follw the smell and deposit money!!!!!!

Dave

[Haynes Forest Products]

Dano2840 I can see that math has come in real handy

[Jeff E]

I have had the kids go from gathering a few pails full, finger-licking the pan after we are done and grinning and running around, to now the business aspect of getting the tubing nailed down just so, cleaning tanks, helping with building up the arch.

Now they are able to take the buckets and bags (350 possible) and be entrepenurial. I will pay them 25 cents for every gallon gathered and brought in from neighbors, or friends trees. Time will tell if they take me up on it!!
I supply equipment, 4 wheeler and gathering tanks.

[Justin Turco]

Hey Jeff, That's a good idea. I'll have to think about doing that with my kids.
They are not as interested as I'd like them to be. (One, more so, than the other.) But I definately want them at my side. As they get older I'd like them to feel like spring isn't spring if your not sugaring. And as many of us have probably found, it's hard to find helpers that will still be with you at 11:00 pm. You'd really like them to be but, Sugaring beyond that hour is reserved for the guy who built the sugarhouse, the person who fixes lines in a snowstorm, and the one who is going to have to do ALL the cleanup once the fun is over for the year. Beyond that hour is for the guy to whom the 30 year old "dream" belongs.

Yo...DanO, 250 feet from route 100?! You lucky Dog..you cant fail!

Justin

[Justin Turco]

Cross Road Sugar Co. The beginning.

My Grandfather Gates sugared a little in Simmonsville in the 60’s. But the real love of sugaring started for my family in the late 50’s when my Grandfather Turco, my Dad and my Uncle tapped a few trees around their house on Crow Hill Road in Chester. Like most of us, they started outside with a soot covered pan on cement blocks. In time they bricked up an arch in an outbuilding on the property. They spent many warm happy nights tending the evaporator in that little sugarhouse and all had some fun, but for Uncle Mike, it meant the most. Uncle Mike loved to sugar and it was He that introduced me to sugaring in 1977. Mike was home, on vacation, from his job as a welder on the Alaskan Pipeline project when he showed me what to do then left me to do it. When Mike got back and checked my work, he got a good laugh seeing that I had tapped an Oak tree. My parents were good enough to let me boil in a roasting pan inside. One nice spring day I decided to take my shotgun out for a quick rabbit hunt while boiling down some sap. When I got back my roasting pan was roasted. The Bottom was bowed up and glowing red hot, the house was completely filled with smoke. My evaporator destroyed, my season was over. The next year the operation grew when I moved outside to a soot covered pan on cement blocks with my neighbor and partner, Carl. Around that time, there was one sugarhouse in particular that stands out. The Cole’s Sugarhouse in Chester. My Dad and Uncle helped out there from time to time. Two big evaporators setting side by side…Lots of Smoke, Lots of Fire and BIG Steam. It was all a brief moment in my life but a seed was planted. A plan was slowly taking shape in my mind. Someday, I knew, I would have a sugarhouse. In 1997 I set up a barrelstove evaporator. 14 hours of boiling to make a gallon of syrup. I was sugaring bigger than ever. I loved it! That was the year I penned out a rough sketch of the building that would house our future operation. Finally, in 2003, time, money and strong sense of being tired of standing in the mud, motivated the start of construction on our new sugarhouse. A very old dream was finally coming true for me. On March 16, 2004 we sweetened up the pans on our 2X6 Grimm “Lightning”, for the first time. It truly has turned out to be everything I had hoped it would be. I can’t tell you how much I like to make firewood, tap trees, gather sap, walk lines and run the evaporator. My family. My friends. Smoke, fire and steam. I love everything about it. And late at night, when I’m in the sugarhouse by myself: drinking sap, “drawing off“, and pumping wood through that red hot “Lightning” just as fast as I can. I like to think that my Uncle Mike, and my two Grandfathers, who never experienced this sugarhouse…are there with me in the steam. Watching… and approving… as the tradition continues. Life is SWEET, I am a fortunate man. Thank you Lord.

Justin Turco

[3% Solution]

Justin,
Does dad come over?
How's he doing?
Wish my dad was here to help!! :-(

Dave

[Justin Turco]

WWW.VermontFancy.com the guy in the picture that looks like me, that's my dear old Dad. He's not into it the way I am but he likes to gather and make wood. And makes it up a time or two during the season. My parents live about an hour away. He's the best Deer Hunting partner a man could ask for. I know his next move, he knows mine. (If it weren't for GPS though, we'd still be in the woods arguing about which way to drag the deer out of the woods. heh heh heh.)

Justin

[tessiersfarm]

Thank god for fathers! Mine says it is a waste of time and energy but he seems to spend a lot there too. He is quick to grab a beer and "tend" the evaporator, although it will be ok for a while if he is out of beer. It is also a good place to stash the kids if I need to get something done, hey Gramps needs some help. I think he likes it more than I do, or maybe just as much.

[Mackdaddy]

Man Justin, reading how you got started is enought to get a guy fired up. My grandfather Leslies Williams and his brother in law were awarded back in the day for their accomplishments of fine syrup making in Cornville, Maine. The passion to make syrup skipped a generation with my dad, but I have the bug something serious. Growing up in Skowhegan as a kid I had an opportunity to work with a farmer and in the spring he and I taught ourselves the art. Now living in Central Ohio and finally having the ability to try it again, I find myself consumed every year just after the holidays trying to fine tune what I did the year before. My first year of succes was like most, small pan on block evaporator. Not very effiecient, but gave us a vote of success. Last year built our own barrel evaporator and used same pan to make about 12 gallons. Now that we have created a little bit of demand around here, I am looking to improve again this year with getting some custom pans made and possibly running two barrel evaporators. One day, I too have the dream of nice equipment and running strong, but in the meantime I am having a blast compromising while trying to match my grandfathers quality!

Mackdaddy

[Dill]

My daughter who is 18 months rode around in the backpack while we checked buckets. Unfortunatly according to her every bucket contained "water" and she can't understand why. She was sure the next one would have a cool prize or something.

[Turtlecreek]

My 2 year old son also rode on my back last year. during tapping and collecting. This year he is a collector in training. It is fun sharing this passion with him even at his youg age.

[etaylor@rochester.rr.com]

I have seven sugar maples in my yard which I tap. I do this with my grand children. When I was growing up, my dad hung a 1000 buckets and made maple syrup each year. It was a time the whole family came together and worked and we had fun doing it. We always had picinic lunches and eat in the woods. My dad always did the boiling, many times till after midnight. After we gathered all the sap, my dad had a treat ready for us, wax on snow. He would pour the thick syrup over the snow and we would roll it up on a stick and lick it like a lollipop. Any left syrup we whipped into maple sugar or maple cream.
I want my grand children to experience the family fun, the tapping of the trees, hanging the buckets, gathering sap and the sweet taste of the syrup. This was my fourth year doing this with them. They asked the last two years when we would start tapping trees. I let them drill the hole, with a cordless drill, they drive the tap into the tree and hang the bucket and cover. Each year we have a hotdog roast outside to commemorate the tapping of the trees. Then we have snowball fights and the girls like to make snow angels. I miss those special times we had with my dad and the gathering of the whole family. I hope my grand children will someday carry this on, or least have the special memories. I'm lucky if I get two quarts of syrup, and it is split between the grand children, but the time is special for me.

[KenWP]

30 some years ago my mother gave me a collector ceramic jug filled with syrup. I never opened the jug and it's still full. It got a picture done in ink of geese flying north over a sugar cabin in the woods of Quebec with smoke coming out of the chimney. The paper work that comes with it tells of a old Quebec saying ``When the Great Canadas fly northward,the fires are lit in the sugar cabins below. I also bought a book on collecting fruits and berries and such from the wild that had pictures and how to make maple syrup and a map of where maple trees grew. I unfortunately grew up in Alberta and there were no trees out on the prairie where I lived let alone maples. I moved to Quebec last year and the place I bought I was told by the guy I had bought it from that there were no maples on it that a guy could tap. Turns out that in the yard there are 6 huge silver maples and one hard maple and out in the bush behind I have found mixed in with the cedars and spruce 30 more hard maples and the neighbour's land has hundreds that he has no use for so I just had to figure out how to tap and make maple syrup. It will be a learning experience to say the least and my wife who was born close by to Ayer's Cliff figures I am nuts and has al lthese horror stories of guys who have tried to make maple syrup before. Of course they all tried to boil it on the stove in the house in little pots. So this middle aged old man who never burnt wood or seen a maple tree till two years ago is bound and determined he is going to make syrup this spring even if he has to stay up all night boiling sap in a SS sink on a homemade evaporator in the dark.

[tyrod2]

YEPPPP That is how it starts when the MAPLE BUG bites. Been thair and done that. Good Luck and have fun.