One of the best spring tonics we know is to take in the rising steam of the boiling sap from the evaporator at the sugar house at the Kinter Farm. Each year we eagerly await the harvesting of the sap and the chance to take in the sweet smell of the boiling sap. This evaporator is gas fired; an older evaporator used at the sugar house for many years was wood fired. The sap is heated to just the right temperature and begins to flow through several chambers in the evaporator before boiling down to finished syrup that is bottled into maple syrup.
Cold nights and warm sunny days allow the sap in the sugar maples to rise. It takes anywhere from 40 to 60 gallons of sap to boil down into one gallon of maple syrup.