For Family History Part One click here.

Our Family’s History of Making Maple Syrup ; Part Two

When John bought his own farm in 1967, he was excited to have a large Maple woodlot. We were married in October, 1967, so the next Spring we began to tap a few trees and make a bit of maple syrup. Having helped in the sugar bush all my life, I was very pleased to still have this privilege in our married life. The Lord blessed us with 3 sons, and they also entered into the fun. As Jerry, Roger and Jeffrey grew, so did our syrup operation. Every Spring, we spent time at my parent’s place (Amos Baker) while they were making syrup, and our sons loved helping my brother Paul and his family in the bush. But our sons kept wanting to tap more trees here and have an operation like their grandfather had! First we used an iron kettle; then John and his father made a larger pan, so the boys could tap more trees.

In 1985, we built a sugar camp, here near our house. We chose the location because it was at the edge of the bush, at the end of our mile long driveway, and we were able to put electricity in it. We cut our own cedar and hemlock trees for lumber, and did all the work ourselves, of cementing, and framing, and putting on the cedar ship-lap siding. John welded up the wood-fired arch and we had a set of flu pans made to fit. In the spring of 1986, we tapped 800 trees with buckets. Every year we increased until we had 1500 buckets. The next Fall, we put up plastic lines in one of the woodlots, and over the next few years, added more plastic lines until everything was on tubing, for a total of 4000 taps. We also built a large woodshed area, attached to the east end of the camp.

The wood fired arch was five feet by fourteen feet, and lined with fire brick. The grates were heavy, perforated steel, with holes punched in it, so air could come up under the fire. We had a fan to blow air in on the fire. John made air tight doors. To put wood in, we shut the blower off before we opened the fire door, or it would blow fire in your face. The extra air sure made a hot fire. Air is cheap fuel. We could boil 300 gallons of sap an hour.

It took a big wood pile! Our wood pile just for making syrup was two hundred feet long, and eight feet high with wood four feet in length. We cut it a year ahead, and had it drying outside all summer. Then in the fall, we moved it into the camp woodshed, and stacked the woodshed as full as possible. The boys had wood piled right up to the peak. John made a wood cart, which the boys filled and rolled it over to the fire box. There is a lot of manual labour when you burn wood. From the time the tree was cut until the piece of wood was thrown into the fire, we had handled each piece of wood eight times.

John and the boys, with the help of John’s father, made a separate finishing pan, also wood fired. It was two feet by six feet. The syrup was taken off manually, when the temperature reached 219 degrees, F. We put it through a large filter, which was two layers of nylon filter and one layer of felt. It made a nice clear syrup. We put it into containers right away, while it is still very hot. This is always my job, to fill the containers.

In 1990, we bought the farm next door for Jerry. It has a large woodlot on it, which added another 1200 trees. The bush is right beside the road, which makes it very handy to collect the sap. The wagon tanks can sit in a small parking spot at the edge of the quiet, country road. In the next few years, we were able to buy more farm land, for Roger and Jeffrey, with more maple acreage.

But boiling syrup takes time. And there were still chores to do after the sap was all boiled. Our sons were getting married, and had farms of their own next door, or nearby, and now John and our sons each had a barn full of chores to do at the end of the day. John had hogs, a farrow to finish operation which the boys all helped with, and the boys each had beef cattle plus Jeffrey had a herd of goats.

So in 1992 we bought an oil fired evaporator, called a “Thunderbolt” with a “piggy back” on top. It was four feet wide and fourteen feet long. This was a big improvement. We could boil twice as fast. Now we could process six hundred gallons of sap an hour. There were many things we liked about the new Thunderbolt. When you started the burner, the pans were soon boiling. At the end of the day, we could use up all the sap that we had on hand, and once the sap tank was empty, Jerry turned off the switch, and the fire went out just as fast as it started. The “piggy back” was a pan above the back pan, and the steam from the bottom pan made the top pan boil. Something like the double boiler we ladies use in the kitchen, where the boiling water in the bottom cooks what’s in the top kettle. With the piggy back and the pre-heater, we had lots of hot water for washing the syrup filters and the sap tanks. Also, now we could use the big adjoining woodshed for filling and storing the syrup containers. John built lots of shelves and we moved in tables for our meals.

One of the woodlots is close enough to the sugar camp so that we can pump the sap right to the camp. That is very handy. The other two woodlots are out by the road, so we pump the sap onto tanks on wagons and haul it in with the tractor. Those tanks hold fifteen hundred gallons each. It is always exciting to watch the tractor come slowly in the long lane with a full tank of sap! Then we pump the sap through a sap filter and up to an overhead tank, where it runs by gravity into the Thunderbolt.

In 1999 we bought an oil-fired finishing pan, three feet by ten feet, with two pans on it, divided into sections to keep the sap moving. This again was a big improvement over the wood fired finishing pan, and increased our gallons per hour.

By 2008, some of our tubing was getting pretty old. Jerry spent all fall and winter replacing the plastic tubing and the main lines. He put the main lines closer together, so he could make the lateral lines shorter. Now there is a maximum of 5 taps per line. This was big improvement. He also installed some “sap ladders,” which enabled us to tap trees that were in a little lower section of woodlot. Jerry was able to add more trees, bringing our total up to 5400 taps.

All his hard work really paid off. The Spring of 2009 was the best year we’ve ever had. The weather was perfect, day after day, and the sap just ran and ran. We had so much fun. We made 2854 gallons. Our biggest day was March 16, when we made 220 gallons. That was a long day. We boiled for 20 hours. We had boiled late on Sat. night, and the sap ran a lot on Sunday. Jerry and I started boiling at midnight Monday morning. John helped us get started and went back to bed. Roger and Jeffrey took turns looking after the pumps in the bush, and hauling sap; then going back to bed for awhile. When Jerry and I started at midnight, there were 7000 gallons of sap here in the yard. How exciting! Jerry and I boiled alone in those early morning hours. When I am alone with the canning, I fill gallon containers. When the grandchildren get home from school, they help John and I fill smaller sizes. Each family member has their job. Jerry always looks after the evapourator, and Roger and Jeffrey look after the sap pumps in the bush, and haul the sap and wash out tanks, and check the bush lines.

2012 was the twenty first year of using the Thunderbolt. It had done a great job for us, and we would have kept on using it for many years. But there was this problem of the price of fuel, which kept going up and up, and the Thunderbolt used lots of it. When you look in the little peep hole, and see the raging fire, you see why the sap boils so fast! They say the heat in there is one million BTU.

For the past few years, the boys kept talking of alternatives to burning oil, since we have lots of wood to burn. So that year, as we were all together in the camp, making syrup, we kept making plans for the future, and on the last day of syrup season, when Jerry turned the Thunderbolt off for the last time, I felt like crying. But our sons and our grandsons want to expand and tap more trees, as we have more woodlots we could tap. So in the summer of 2012, we built a new sugar camp near the old one, and installed a new 4′ x 16′ wood fired evaporator. The new designs are very efficient, and don’t burn as much wood. Now this Spring (2016) we tapped 2 more woodlots which brings our total of taps up to 7600.

We sell most of our syrup direct to the customers, so we try to fill all the containers we will need while we are making syrup. We have a new filter press and we fill the containers with hot syrup right after it comes out of the filter press. The grandchildren help fill the containers, put on lids and labels. As a family, we all love making Maple Syrup. It is a wonderful family project to do together, with lots of things the grandchildren can help us with.

We bring to you a top quality based on the experiences of two centuries of Maple Syrup production in Ontario. Our grandsons are the ninth generation of Maple Syrup producers in Ontario! We bring to you our very best! Straight from the farm to you!

So……Use lots of “Drudge Family Farm Maple Syrup!”

John and Elizabeth Drudge, and family; Wroxeter, Ontario ph. 519-291-2819

Jerry and Juanita; Janelle, Jerilynn, Jordan, and Justus

Roger and Martha; Lois, Logan, Kara, Chandra, and Lori

Jeffrey and Cindy; Trevor, Travis, Trina and Tracy