Marathon County Maple, Day 1

I flew here to help make maple syrup for the first time in ... well, forever, actually. It was an annual event when I was growing up, my dad had one big customer for years, and several others, if the season was good enough, plus what he made for home use. (The stuff he didn't think was good enough to sell—too dark. But more flavorful, in my opinion.)

I didn't ride, too cold even for me. And timing is a problem, because the season is weather-related: sap flows when nights are below freezing and days are above. Xavier said "around April 1st..." so I picked two weeks before and one after, and bought a non-refundable ticket on United. Of course, it then started early; I completely missed hanging the pails and the first batch. :-(

Unlike many sugarbushes, we cook in the open, above a wood fire—no 'reverse osmosis' or wimpy covered shack!


A tapped tree. The old way (left) was to hang a bucket from a metal spout, new was a plastic tap connected via a small tube to a larger one, which fed the sap into a collecting station. We're not tapping enough to bother setting up that longer tube, so plastic taps drain into a bucket sitting on the ground.


Buckets are emptied into scattered collecting tubs, and then a small engine-driven pump is used to push it back to the central tub, visible here:

That's an old stainless steel bulk milk tank, which can hold about 300 gallons of sap. Its outlet is plumbed (via a removablle 2" PVC pipe) to the cooking pan, which is sitting atop the firebox, sealed to it with mud.


The fire needs feeding every six hours or so, but if there's not too much sap, it's sometimes allowed to go out (early in the boil). The pan is covered with planks, raised on one end to allow steam to escape.

You can see the other firebox here, and its pan in the background leaning against a woodpile. That pan wasn't treated properly the last time it was put away, and the bottom is rusted out. That's not too critical this year; we don't have enough trees tapped to keep both pans working. (The pans were hand made out of galvanized sheet steel by Xavier and Daddy some 30 years ago.)

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