2024 Vermont Maple Season Preparations
“There were nights I would work for a few hours to make something work with what I had only to take it all apart, call it a day, and hope I woke up smarter tomorrow.”
The interior of our new sugar house is functional! We will always be tweaking it to make it better based on lessons learned, but it satisfies me to say it’s functional. To have a sugar house that actually resembles the one I dreamed of means a lot to all of us here at Wild Woods Maple. I imagined this mansion of maple while boiling in our old wood shed and while boiling in the first sugar house I built. I wanted a clean, well lit functional space to boil as much sap as I could manage. This is the year we are going to find out if it all works!
Late night framing the reverse osmosis room.
It was a lot of daunting work but our slow and steady approach has gotten it done. We have tried to balance sugar house construction with family time. This business and sugar house is for all of us to enjoy so everyone has had input when possible. The reward of giving a family tour of a newly completed aspect of the build is unmatched. Plenty of confusing problems have presented themselves on this summers journey. Namely the evaporator and its bricking and hood hoist pulley system. Both of those made me feel the momentum of the build die. One minute we were cruising right along and the next minute I am at home at the dinner table telling the family I have no idea how to build a hood hoist.
Placing the insulation behind the bricks.
Done! It sat like this for a few days to let everything cure.
Bricking the evaporator
The evaporator bricking was slow and tedious but at least I had a set of instructions to follow. I got it done without any major setbacks. I remember feeling a little bit of pressure from the weather forecast to get it done before freezing temperatures set in for the winter. I wanted to do a test boil before things got too cold in the sugar house and I wanted warm weather for the refractory cement to cure properly. All of the bevels cut into the bricks and all of the forms I had to build certainly took a long time. One day I decided to tear apart the work from the previous day’s work so I could change something by a half inch. Exactly zero speed records were set while bricking our evaporator but it seems to be done correctly.
The first day of sheathing the reverse osmosis room.
Newly installed steam and smoke stacks.
2024 started out with a hollow empty shell of a steel building with a heap of sugaring equipment, still wrapped in plastic, in the middle of it. We had to build the floor for the big mezzanine, we had to build an RO room, we had to build a concentrate tank room, we had to get it wired and plumbed and we needed to get a really expensive well drilled. We needed to bury a drain pipe and do some serious landscaping in front of the sugar house. We had to split and stack as much fire wood as possible. All of our regular sap line maintenance needed to be done as well. Not only did we have to do all this but we had to pay for it too. I worked for the first half of the summer doing maintenance on other people’s sap lines and used that income to fund the build.
Getting some much needed help from our neighbor to put our concentrate tank above the evaporator.
Evaporator hood hoist
I have a good understanding of pulley systems from some rope rescue work I have done but the hood hoist had some unique limiting factors. Probably the most limiting aspect was the limited availability of supplies. There a couple hardware stores near by and the items I needed were hard to come by. I managed to piece it all together after mocking the whole thing up with ropes and carabiners. Let’s just say I have a larger than necessary stockpile of extra clamps, pulleys and cable scraps after all of my shopping. Another challenge was how aim the cables towards something solid that could hold the hood in the air. Our steel framed building from World Wide Steel was an absolute pleasure to build. I just didn’t have the foresight to line up the evaporator so the hoist was next to a steel truss, small oversight by yours truly... There were nights I would work for a few hours to make something work with what I had only to take it all apart, call it a day, and hope I woke up smarter tomorrow. All of these struggles also had an audience! Our electrician was there cruising through his wiring while I struggle bussed the hoist. Unlike me he knew what he was doing and I was jealous of his fluid efficiency and competence. All hardships aside I eventually got it done. It is less than perfect but it works. Oh, and now that I was able to lift the hood, I could also wrestle the heavy flue pan out of the way so I could brick the inside of the evaporator. One impossible project was completed, enabling the unceremonious start of another doozy project.
The first fire! This fire was kept small to help cure the bricks. We only let temperature get up to 300 degrees for an hour then let it cool.
The hoist and the bricking were huge cruxes to get past. Since finishing those jobs, we have finished a lovely, steel sheathed reverse osmosis room that is generous in size. We insulated it and it provides a nice warm space for us to hang out. The tanks are in place and all required plumbing is done. The sugar house will hopefully be insulated and heated someday but that will have to wait for now. The surfaces are all cleanable, the lights are bright and like I said earlier, it is what I had dreamed of!
We have had many family planning sessions to develop the floor plan, workflow and individual responsibilities. I love talking it over with Katie and the Kiddos. Right now, we are excited to see some warm days in the forecast as we use this maple season to ease into production. Our goal is to gather all the sap we can and either boil it or sell it. We don’t have a lofty syrup production goal. We want to make enough great tasting, real Vermont maple syrup to sell this summer at markets. We look forward to meeting great new customers and sharing our story. As a homeschooling family and Rob’s recent retirement from the Army we have time to roam and share our delicious product. We are excited for this new chapter in our lives!
