Maple Syrup season has once again come and gone. One of the things we really love about the farm is that every season brings something new. The one exception, of course, is the heart of winter here – roughly December through February – when things slow down and we take a bit of a pause. We use those months to catch up on projects, plan for the year ahead, and spend time resting and enjoying the holidays with family.
By the time maple syrup season arrives, it feels like a welcome sign that warmer weather is on the way and that we can spend more time outdoors again – something I look forward to every year. And, as always, each season gives us another opportunity to refine our process, improve efficiency, and learn a little more than we did the year before. This year was no exception.
The biggest improvement this year, in my opinion, was simply moving our evaporator into a building. Not having to roll it out and set everything up before each weekend’s boil made the entire process smoother and far less time consuming. It also meant we could boil regardless of the weather instead of scrambling to put together some kind of temporary shelter whenever rain or snow showed up.
It was a relatively small change, but one that made a huge difference. Honestly, after two years of boiling outside, it almost felt like cheating. More than anything though, it has us even more excited about the idea of building a permanent sugar shack in the future. More on that to come!
The next big improvement was in our sap collection process. We collect sap in food-grade 5-gallon buckets, and in previous years that meant constantly rotating buckets in and out of the woods. We’d head out on the 4-wheeler with eight empty buckets, come back with eight full ones, and repeat the process as we worked our way through the woods. While I’m very thankful for the 4-wheeler and trailer — especially considering that our first year we carried them all by hand — the process was still time consuming and limited by how many empty buckets we had available.
This year we upgraded to a 65-gallon tank that fits perfectly in the trailer, and it made a huge difference. Instead of swapping buckets, we can now drive through the woods, empty each bucket into the tank, and keep moving. We also invested in food-grade electric pumps, which allow us to pump sap directly from the tank into the evaporator. A small change, but another nice efficiency gain.
It’s still not a perfect process. Eventually, we’d like to add a large storage tank that we can empty the collection tank into, but that’s a project for next year.
Bottling went smoothly again this year thanks to the steam bottler, but I’d still like to improve our filtering process. Right now, if there are two areas that slow us down the most, I’d say it’s evaporating and filtering — both of which are high on the list for improvements for next season.
We’re still researching the best options for filtering, but we’ve already started heading down a new path when it comes to evaporation. Our Smoky Lake Star Cat evaporator has been great for us, and if you’re looking for a mobile setup, I’d argue it’s perfect. But we’ve reached a point where we’re ready to scale up and move a bit faster.
We spent a lot of time researching options and talking to the folks at Smoky Lake Maple Products — who are incredibly knowledgeable and awesome to talk with — about what our next steps should be. That, combined with our visit to a friend’s sugar shack, really helped solidify our plans for the future.
So, I’m excited to share that in 2026 we’ll be expanding our maple syrup operation even further and building a dedicated sugar shack here at Birch Bend Farm. There’s still plenty more to figure out, but we’re excited to start this next chapter. More details to come in a future post, so stay tuned!
Overall, we’re once again incredibly happy with how this year’s maple syrup season turned out. It’s a lot of hard work, but the finished product always makes it worthwhile. And if you’re interested in purchasing some syrup, feel free to reach out through the Contact Us page in the menu at the top of the site!
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