New Evaporator for 2005

This is our new rig for this season. Purchased through eBay, believe it or not. It's a Dominion & Grimm from Canada, fired by a gas burner made in NY. It also has an automatic drawoff to open a valve on the syrup pan when it's up to syrup temperature...pretty cool.

2003

This is the 10'x2.5 evaporator we rescued from an abandoned sugarhouse.

For 2003 we made 27.75 gallons of syrup

So, late January of 2000 we started tapping trees & hanging buckets.

We also tapped the old-fashioned way with a brace and bit. Since we only had about 25 taps it didn't take too long.









This is our first evaporator. It was built from concrete blocks, Grandpa's pans & some parts we made and/or salvaged ourselves.

Michael made the door, Dad made the base for our smokestack and I got the hood for free when my employer was going to throw it out.

We added a squirrel-cage fan from our old furnace to blow the steam out and we were on our way.

As you can see, the fan did not always keep up with the steam.

Grandpa was able to come up & help us out with our first season. Here he is with Tucker watching our finishing pot.










Michael & his dad, Don hard at work sugaring with help from Maxine.


Tucker helped out with collecting sap, too. He's a little hard to see, but he's in the trailer.

Humble beginnings

These pictures are of Grandpa Roland's sugarhouse and evaporator near Knoxville, TN. We hauled all of this stuff to Indiana on Memorial Weekend of 1999.

Austin sampling the sap

I'll add the complete story later, but here is the short version.

We have been sugaring since 2000. We started with a homemeade wood-fired block evaporator with flat pans from my grandfather, then purchased and rehabbed an abandoned 30"x10' wood-fired rig.
Our current rig is a 30"x8' gas-fired unit we purchased on eBay.
Last year we took the season off to allow Michael & Lori time to adust to being parents, but this season we'll be back to the usual

Startup

This blog will be about our maple syrup operation near Coatesville, IN. It may not be updated all that often, but at least we will add some pictures and other maple-related info as we get time.