Introduce yourselves...
Greeting's everyone. I'm Steve and my father is Ron, and together we operate a backyard operation of 160 tap's. However, we did not start out with this size operation, so I'll start at the begining. Back in '85 we decided to tap 12 tree's of a neighbor's with the 12 steel spile's my mother had purchased year's before. We hung plastic milk jug's on them and they were alway's running over by the time we could gather them. Occasionally, throughout Jr. High and High School, my mother would let me play hooky to boil sap if we had a good run. That first year we boiled on a cement block fireplace with a small cast iron pot and a large aluminum frying pan. We soon learned that this was not the best boiling set up. We also learned that a roaring fire will melt the handle off an aluminum frying pan. And without a handle to pick it up off the fire with, the small amount of syrup that was in the pan burn's to a crisp! The following year my mother let us use her oval shaped roasting pan's. They worked better and we were pretty happy. Mother, on the other hand, was not too happy after seeing the condition of her pan's at the end of the season. My father had a pan made for the following year. It was about 1.5'x2' and that worked well. Over the next two year's we added two more fireplace's and pan's and increased the number of tap's to 55. It was quite a site in the back yard! We collected sap with milk can's in the trunk of a brown and white 1975 AMC Hornet. As you can imagine, this was quite a site too. Due to college and work taking up a lot of time, we had to call it quit's on the syrup making in '89. We had a lot of fun making syrup and we said that somtime we would do it again. Fast forward to 2002. I was laid off from work and just by chance, my mother and I saw a homemade evaporator that was for sale. It needed a lot of work to make it an efficient boiler, so I decided to pass on it. But my mother insisted that I go back and look it over. I'm pretty good at welding and fabricating so she was certain I could make it work. I did buy it after a lot of argueing with myself. It was pretty much just a big steel box with two flat stainless pan's. That first spring, I fire bricked it and got a smokestack on it. Over the last couple of year's, I've welded partition's in the front pan and put ten flue's in the rear pan. The proper fitting's and valve's were also added. I plumbed a furnace blower into the ash box and welded an a small overhead tank to it so we could gravity feed the rear pan. We are real pleased with it's performance and it's a huge step up from our three block fireplace's and pan's! My father and I made 42 gallon's of syrup this year. We have access to more tree's so we could make more syrup, but we would have to either invest in a larger evaporator or a R.O. Every minute of our spare time now is spent boiling our 160 tap's. Does this dilema sound familiar? Time will tell but were alway's thinking "bigger". Unfortunately, my mother passed away in 2002 but I am thankful for her "insistance" on getting back to sugaring. It truly is an addiction! Now I can't imagine springtime without making syrup! I also can't imagine life without the Mapletrader! This is a great website. Goodluck everyone in 2007!
Steve
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