Oh,how I wish I would have paid more attention to what my mother and father did. I'm glad somebody still knows how to do it. Thanks for starting and continuing this thread.
I haven't been involved in maple syrup since the early 1960s. But, it seems like this would be a great year for lots of production. For the last several weeks our temps have been going between the single digits and into the mid-30s/lower-40s nearly every day. It sometimes varies as much as 10 degrees either way. With these temperature swings, I'm sure the maples are moving a lot of sap. It has also been two very wet years for us, so there is a lot of moisture in the root systems.
We used a team of Belgian horses to collect the buckets, using what my family called "sledges" -- not sleds! My dad and my uncles put boards where logs were usually loaded on the sledges, and they put large sap "boxes" on top of those. The "boxes" were the size of the top of our sap stove. When there was lots of sap running, they hung smaller (3-4 gallon??) buckets above the boxes.
We sold most. We split the rest with the family.
My mother and aunts would cook around the clock over a big wood fired flat top stove that my uncle welded from steel plates. It was in our smokehouse -- as the bacon and hams were done by syrup season. It was definitely a labor of love.
It sure all looks delicious,and sure brings back a lot of memories.
