We started boiling syrup on the original flat pan evaporator that was on the
property from the previous owner who had it installed sometime in the 1940’s.
Taylor eyed the setup and asked if he could try to make maple syrup and dad said
sure. We boiled on the old pans for a few years and then eventually remodeled
the old hunting cabin on the property into our new boil room where we upgraded
our setup to what we use today. We originally started out using buckets to collect sap. On good days, when the sap was really flowing, we would have to empty the buckets three times a day. After we had collected the sap we would start boiling the sap into syrup, which most times took around 18 hours to boil. Our longest boil on the old flat pans was 22 hours. After our second year we added a Reverse Osmosis machine which would take out a good portion of the water in the sap and cut down our boil time. In our second year, we decided that if this was going to become a small business we needed to become more efficient, which led us to a line system instead of buckets for sap collection and a bigger and more efficient evaporator.