Tapping Trees at Brouwer Berries

With all the April snow, Dan can't get into the strawberry field, but he never has trouble finding projects to entertain himself on the farm.  If you've ever walked through our grove to the strawberry patch, you may have noticed the rows of maple trees. He's tapped five of them, and managed to collect over 30 gallons of sap! 

At first, he tried boiling the sap down in our house, but at a ratio of 60 gallons sap to 1 gallon syrup, my windows were getting pretty steamy:)  So, he rooted around in the old red barn, and found an old wood furnace to re-purpose, and created this set-up:

Do you see the old pressure canner on top of the furnace, and the steam rising?  He's kept this boiling on and off all week now, and about once a day he's brought in one pint jar of syrup for us:

I'm a Canadian, I love this stuff -- and no -- it's not for sale:)