Desjardins Maple Syrup History
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We Moved to Belchertown Ma. in 1999 after a year long renovation of a 125 year old farmhouse.
For some odd reason.. maybe I was bit by a maple bug, I tried tapping one of our trees one spring. we boiled on the kitchen stove (to my wife's dismay), and with good success we made about 1 pint of the stuff the first year. after that each year we went up from 1 pt to 3/4 of a gallon to 5 gals then in season(2003)we made 15 gallons. after the first year we boiled outside until 2003 season, Then we used a leader half pint evaporator in the old garage . in mid 2004 we bought our wood fired 2'x6' Evaporator, rebuilt the garage into a nice working sugarhouse. in 2005 we converted the evaporator to oil which will help us boil more frequently and shorter periods. this rocketed us to 100 gallons.
For 2009 we upgraded again to a 3x8 Wood fired beast!! Bring on the sap !!
here are our evaporators
when temperatures at the end of winter change and we have freezing nights and warm days, Sap starts to move in the maple tree, this is the start of sugar season. We have tapped mostly roadside sugar maples, we have pipeline with vacuum in our sugarbush behind our house, and another location in Quabbin Resevoir. All made up of sugar maples and red maples. we have over 600 taps. we collect the sap every day, and boil till it's done.
It takes 40-50 gallons of sap from the maple tree to make 1 gallon of pure maple syrup
. With our evaporator we make 2+ gallons of syrup an hour, in previous years it took us almost 7 hours to make 1 gallon. Our present goal is to make over 200 gallons/year
WE HIT OUR past goal of 100 Gallons in 2008
The 2008 Sugar season was a perfect season, we had almost 5 weeks of steady 20deg nights and 40deg days, giving us the opportunity to make 100 gallons of the sweet stuff.
We also have Chickens that we get great farm fresh eggs from
