Our family has been making maple syrup for 5 generations. In the 80's, my dad and mom resurrected the family operation after it had been stopped for several years.  Along with being a school teacher, my dad ran a Christmas Tree Farm.  He would make Maple Syrup to pay for seedling trees to plant on the farm.  I remember “helping” him collect sap when we were young.  We drove around on the tractor with a giant metal container that we would fill to the brim with sap.  We would then drive it to The Sap Shanty, which was our little sap factory.  We would put a hose through the window to siphon the sap into the holding tank before it moved through our wood burning evaporator.  We had a lean-to out back with several cords of wood to keep the evaporator running.  My dad and grandpa would often spend the night during the sap season to boil all night when the sap was running good. My grandpa made a little living area inside the sap shanty.  It had a table, small kitchenette, futon that doubled as a bed, a toilet, and a wood burning stove.  Our family would tap around 200 maple trees on our property.  

Over the years, making maple syrup has become a hobby and we no longer sell what we make.  We give it to friends and family who enjoy it all year long.  The Sap Shanty has become an infamous place in our family history.  We have so many fond memories of that little shack which seemed like a hotel when we were kids.  My dad still runs the maple syrup operation to this day, but with 3 kids and 12 grandkids, he needs to plan out his time in the sugar bush with all the activities going on.  That is what brought about this app.  I researched several whitepapers dealing with forecasting maple syrup production and was able to come up with an algorithm to help give more accuracy to the sap run, so we could plan out our schedule of when to collect sap on the farm.  It isn’t perfect, but our hope was that we could maximize our time when the sap was flowing!  

We hope it helps you.  And even more, we hope that your family enjoys coming together over a hot breakfast with some pure homemade maple syrup.  We hope that it helps connect you to the people that matter in your lives like it has done ours. 

Thanks for coming on the journey!

~Jeff Courter