Last year we drove ourselves a little crazy by introducing a lot of new elements into the maple syrup operation. We introduced ourselves to filter presses (which take more sediment out of raw maple syrup), reverse osmosis (pre-concentrates sap before boiling), line vacuum (extracts more sap from trees), blowers (makes fire hotter) and pre-heaters (uses [...]

It was getting to be a bit late in the night on one of those looooong boils last year. Several of us started sniffing the air. Was that something burning? Sometimes a car goes by burning a break pad, skidding around our nasty curve on Tucker Hill Road. It was easy to dismiss the first [...]

We bricked up the “new” old arch in the sugarhouse. The maple syrup crew reconvened in the sugarhouse during exceptionally cold weather (otherwise we’d have been out in the bush putting up maple lines) and worked inside. We patched up the big holes in the windows – with quaint and scenic duct tape – and [...]

Today the guys and I went out to Enfield, NH to haul back an old 3′ by 10′ evaporator to replace our tiny 2′ by 5.5′ unit that served us the past couple few years. While the little unit should have been enough for what we were doing, it turned out to be less efficient [...]