With the framing complete, it was now time to get this sugar shack weathertight. (To read about the framing, check out part I of our project)

Metal roofing is the traditional roofing choice for sugar shacks…and I was certainly not going to stray from tradition.  This was the part of my project I worried about the most. Metal roofing requires a perfectly square roof and getting the panels running straight right from the get go.  My only other metal roofing experience was a tiny wood shed and to say that turned out as desired would be an untruth of epic proportion. With a lot of roofing to install, and both my daylight hours, and the hours my buddy Adam could help me running short, the pressure was on, but after much sweating, fretting, and occasional frustration…the metal roof was in place, and aside from a couple screws that were not seated completely, it was and still is leak free.

Typically this was the point in a building project where I’d be so focused on getting done, that it would take the fun out of it.  But, I kept focusing on some words that my dad told me during one of my earlier building projects. He said “don’t wish for it to be over, the building is the fun part, enjoy it”.   With those words ringing in my head, and a grin on my face, I was ready to tackle the next phase of construction.

Again, sticking with tradition, I wanted my sugar shack to be clothed in board and batten siding.   For those that don’t know, this is a type of siding where wide boards (called boards ) are installed vertically, and narrow strips of lumber (called battens) are placed over the gap between the boards.  I ordered some rough cut hemlock from a local lumber company. I soon learned that rough cut 1”x12”x16’ boards, that were in a full sized tree only days earlier, are heavy, very heavy. Working against weather, and often losing, I worked quickly to get these soggy planks hanging on my building.   With temperatures down into the teens, if I was going to get this thing closed in, I was going to have to keep working.

When I first picked the spot to build my building, from a casual glance, the ground looked relatively level.  Perhaps I was standing with one foot in a hole, because it wasn’t until I started framing that I realized there was about a 12” drop in grade from right to left.  I took a momentary break from siding, to haul 10 tons of crusher run to bring the grade to level. Before starting this project, I had purchased the smallest Kubota tractor and a front end loader to go with it.   I believe with this one task the tractor paid for itself….to this day, the woman who shares my last name, disagrees.

With the grade leveled, I finished up the siding and worked through all the trim details, battens, and building all my doors.  I had seen a pretty neat window setup using barn sashes and a tilt-in design that I used for all my windows. I had also seen a clever design for the cupola doors that would allow them to open upward and keep the weather out while boiling.  The trickiest part of that task was figuring out the pulley placement so that a grown man could actually provide enough force to open said cupola doors; with some trial and error, I got that all figured out.

I don’t know why, because it’s certainly not the norm, but I wanted a wooden plank floor in my sugar shack.   This posed a bit of a problem because wood fired syrup evaporators can be a fire hazard with a wooden floor underneath them.  There are ways to protect the wood, but none of them seemed as safe as I thought they should be. I decided that I wanted to put a large paver hearth under the evaporator area.  To keep moisture at bay, promote good drainage, and to ensure a level base, I put down 4” of gravel on top of the crusher run. I framed the floor with pressure treated 4”x4” sleepers.  I boxed in the area where the pavers would be installed, filled that area with paver base, leveling sand, and then placed the pavers so that they would sit level with the wood flooring. I put a vapor barrier on top of the sleepers and for flooring, and installed 1”x10” pine for floor boards.   The end result was the old timey barn look and feel with a fireproof hearth area. I was thrilled with how it turned out …and I had finished this last bit of construction 4 months to the day from when I started.

While I was building,  I had ordered a 2’x3’ hobby sized Evaporator from Mason Evaporators in Maine.   Unfortunately it arrived a little too late to use for the 2019 season. Without the pressure to get set up for boiling, I took a break for a few months and spent some time taking care of other projects that had been neglected during the build.

The next thing on the to-do list was to get the stack through the roof and connected to the evaporator.   I did not have the heart to put a hole in my new metal roof, or enough chimney assembling experience to convince myself that I needed to install the stack myself, so I reached out to Crocker’s Hardware in Leroy, NY to do the honors.  What would have taken me days of fret, worry, and potential catastrophic results, was done in a day’s time. If I were to do this part over again, I would either have framed the roof so the stack could go straight up, or would have placed the hearth off center, but I did neither of those things, and ended up with a slight bend in the stack. It did not seem to effect performance of the evaporator.

With a particularly wet spring and early summer, I had to wait for a long enough dry stretch to get some stain on the siding.   I picked up a pro-sumer grade sprayer, and in the course of a day, was able to get two coats of stain protecting the hemlock siding.  Based on some input from a friend with a lot of rough lumber experience, I ended up using Flood CWF-UV5 Transparent Stain for my finish.

The other task I decided to hire was getting the electrical run from the house to the shack.  A 50 AMP service would be the best choice to meet the power needs of the shack. To save some money, I signed up to trenching the 100 yards from the house to the shack and lay the wire.  While the trench was open, I ran some direct burial ethernet cable so that I could eventually have internet in the shack. I’m not sure if the money I saved was worth the trenching time, but I did unearth a random kitchen spoon from my backyard, which provided some moments of head scratching as to how such an item would find its way there.  A mystery still unsolved to this very day. The electrician hooked everything up, and with the panel box in place, I took it from there and ran all the lighting and outlet circuits in the shack.  

It was about at this point where I completely lost sight of the shack part of this project, and turned it into an exercise in carpentry creativity.   The overpriced galvanized barn lights and metal clad wiring should have been the first indication that I was taking things too far, but sometimes these things are lost on me.

For those not that close to the maple syrup process, a lot of sugarers use Reverse Osmosis (RO) to remove a large amount of water from the sap before boiling.   Not only does this save time, but saves on fuel cost to run the evaporator. I don’t currently have a Reverse Osmosis setup, but knowing that someday I might want that, and knowing I wanted some running water in shack, I built a small 3’x8’ insulated and heated closet that could house a 65 gallon fresh water barrel, small water heater, on demand water pump…and eventually my RO setup.   I closed the closet in with leftover siding materials. I built a beefy open cabinet to hold a stainless steel wash tub and had some soapstone countertop sections cut out of a remnant from the local stone shop. I installed this next to the utility closet and ran a drain from the sink out to a gray water well about 15’ away from the building.

Now that all the ‘essentials’ were in place, it was time to think about the optional features that would come in handy once the shack was in use.   I was definitely going to need some shelves for storage and additional work surfaces. I built an overhead shelf to hold sap buckets. My buddy gave me an old metal workbench that needed some fresh paint and a new work top.  A night in the workshop with some leftover framing materials took care of that. I put a narrow shelf above the sink area and turned that into a mini maple museum, decorated with old syrup tins, sap buckets, and other maple memorabilia.  I was looking for a place for people to sit when they were hanging out during the sugaring season. A common suggestion on the forums was a picnic table. I still had some of the scaffolding materials that I used for framing the roof. Despite the screw holes and foot prints, these made for a great picnic table.   The last thing I needed to build was a platform to hold my sap barrels. I build that out of pressure treated materials and set it up under the overhang section of the building.

At this point, having completely blown my original budget, construction was complete and all that was left to do was to wait out the winter and think about the day the sap would start running…. 

I had finally done it.   After years of scheming and dreaming, I finally put hammer to nail and built myself an honest to goodness sugar shack.   The extra touches, though not at all necessary really add to the look and feel of the building.

And for those wondering, the sap did finally start to run, and I tapped 25 trees and was able to make about 6 gallons of delicious maple syrup.  Everything in the shack worked out really well, from the evaporator, to all the work surfaces, to the running water and even the cupola doors.   

These days, when I look out over the back yard while enjoying my morning coffee, it almost looks like a scene from New England.   The extra touches and extra dollars that went along with them were definitely worth it. I’ve done a lot of building over the years, but I can honestly say that nothing was as fun and as rewarding as my old timey sugar shack.

Resources used in this phase of construction:

Armor Building Supply - Metal Roofing

Crocker's Ace Hardware - Chimney Install

Jay E. Potter Lumber Company - Rough Cut Hemlock

M.C.M. Natural Stone - Soapstone Countertops

Mason Custom Welding - Maple Syrup Evaporator

I love making maple syrup…and I love carpentry.   Two totally unrelated activities, until recently.

You see, I am a hobby maple syrup producer… they call us backyard sugarers to be exact…and that’s exactly where I’ve done my sugaring til now…in the backyard and in the elements.   For those that don’t know, maple syrup is not the stuff you find in that bottle labeled pancake syrup or table syrup. No, that is an imposter to the pure gooey goodness that can only be created by collecting large amounts of sap from a maple tree and boiling it down for ridiculously long hours to end up with the tiniest portion of pure maple syrup.

Check out our article on backyard sugarin for more on maple syrup…

Before I begin, I will inform you that I am not an architect or even a professional carpenter by day.  It is a trade I learned from my dad, starting at the young age of 13 and have continued to love to this very day.  I’m writing this article because when I was searching for ideas on sugar shack construction, it was hard to find a source containing the details I was looking for. That being said, if you are an aspiring sugarer building a sugar shack, and choose to mimic any of the techniques I used in the construction of my own sugar shack, I am not responsible for any misfortune that may come your way as a result of said actions.   I believe my structure to be of sound design and has already withstood hurricane force winds and heavy snows, but that could be pure dumb luck, and your results may vary.

With the legal disclaimers clearly stated, let’s carry on with the article…

I have always liked the look of the traditional sugar shack…and back where I came from, many of them were just that, small shacks with a metal chimney sticking out of the roof with an opening cupola on it to let out the copious amount of steam that is produced when boiling maple sap.  For many years, I’ve been trying to convince my wife that we needed one of these structures on our property. Now, don’t get me wrong, a structure like this is barely justified for our couple acre parcel and is certainly not justified by the size of my maple sugaring operation. Having never tapped more than eight maples, one could barely form a case for even dedicating a small garden shed to an operation of this size, let alone a full sized building.

Having never been accused of making decisions completely out of necessity, in the summer of 2018 I must have caught my wife in a moment of weakness, and I successfully convinced her that a project such as this would not only make my maple sugaring more enjoyable, but it would add to the value of our property in the event that we ever had a desire to sell…quickly, perhaps an event brought on by one’s bride leaving him on account of foolish spending…something like that.  But spousal approval was only the first step in this quest to construct a fine ‘New Englandy’ sugar shack. I was going to need the town’s approval as well. I had already burned my ‘outbuilding allowance’ with the construction of my first ‘shed’ that has become the home for motorized sources of happiness and essential lawn care machinery over the years. Since I was going to have to get official municipal permission, I figured I might as well ask for as big a building as I had the time and the money to construct.   So, I did exactly that.

There was a traditional sugar shack design I found on the University of Vermont website for a 24’x16’ building with a 12’x16’ overhang for storing firewood and other items that needed protection from the elements.  It seemed to provide most of the things I was looking for and was a decent size for my property. I did tweak the design some, a steeper roof, more windows, different doors, and a few other things to put a bit of my own twist on the building. After pleading with the powers that be and promising to not turn said structure into a retail maple establishment, I was granted the necessary permission to commence construction of my very own sugar shanty.

I decided on pole barn construction as my framing method of choice for this building project.  I had never actually built a pole barn style building, but there were enough videos on the youtubes that convinced me that despite lacking proper training, I could pull this off.  Unfortunately, due to last minute planning, the delay of government negotiations, and an untimely toppling of a large tree on my building site, I was not even getting started until mid September.   With days already becoming shorter and mornings becoming cooler, I enlisted the help of my buddy Adam, who had some time available, to assist me with the parts of my project where a helping hand would make all the difference.

With some stakes in the ground and some strings outlining the designated location, I rented a post hole digger to dig the 14 holes required for the posts that would support the structure.   In typical fashion, renting equipment from your local big box store can prove entertaining. At one point the recoil cord came off in my hand when starting the beast, only to soon be followed by getting the auger stuck 4 feet deep in our wonderful western NY clay, requiring hand digging an adjacent 4 foot hole to release it.  With all the holes dug, we tossed in some cement in the bottom of each to provide a solid footing for the 4”x6” posts that we’d be setting.

Now, at this point, I’m sure there are those construction gurus that have more experience than I with this whole pole barn building thing, that are thinking to themselves that this guy should have filled the holes with gravel, or perhaps encased the posts in concrete, or poured concrete posts… yep, all valid thoughts.  But, it seems that there are more opinions on how to actually set poles for a pole building than there are actually pole buildings in the world, so I went with a post on a concrete footer backfilled with soil. I did spend the extra money to order the higher quality pressure treating for my poles, and I’m gonna hope that through the modern science of fancy chemicals, my posts outlive me.

The beauty of pole barn construction is that you make a lot of progress quite quickly and it doesn’t take too long to have something that looks like a real building standing in your backyard.   What I came to learn is this is really just a false sense of hope, and that everything else beyond this point would take longer than expected. Having never built a pole barn before, what I found was that squaring up a building that is nothing more than a bunch of posts sticking out of the ground and swaying in the wind can prove to be somewhat of a challenge.  It’s a lot like trying to align the trees in the forest after they are fully grown.

With the posts and nailing girts in place, it was time to frame upward.  The plans from the Vermont site had a neat design for a top plate system that would support and hold the rafters in place and didn’t require the traditional bird’s mouth to be cut in the rafter.   After careful layout for my 10/12 pitch roof, it was not until I set my first rafters in place that an eight of an inch miscalculation in lumber dimensions resulted in my 10/12 pitch roof losing a whole pitch and becoming a 9’ish/12 pitch roof…which was what the original design had called for, so I chalked it up to destiny and drove on.  I installed a loft floor over the front half of the building which will provide some storage for things in the off season. The cupola framing took a fair bit of head scratching to get things just the way I wanted them, but came together nicely. I installed the 2″x4″ purlins to support the roofing, and before too long, the sugar shack was completely framed.

Check out the rest of the project in Part II of our story.

Resources used in this phase of construction:

Matthews & Fields Lumber - All framing supplies

University of Vermont - Sugar House Design Ideas

Google Sketchup - 3D Design Tool

Open Office Draw - 2D Design Tool

When we bought our home several years ago, I was excited to see that we had a couple sugar maples on our property.  Growing up, we did not have any maple trees of any size in our yard that we could tap. I was finally going to get my chance at making some delicious maple syrup first hand.

Making maple syrup is really not a very complicated process.   Drill some holes in some maple trees, insert a ‘tap’, collect sap in a bucket, and boil it until it becomes delicious maple syrup.  Sometimes things look a whole lot simpler on paper than they turn out to be in real life.

The first thing to understand is that it takes a whole lot of sap to make some syrup.   The ‘normal’ ratio is about 40:1. Forty gallons of sap is required to make one gallon of syrup.   This can vary throughout the season…and if you mix in any maples other than sugar maples, it’ll take more sap as well.

The next thing to know is what it means to tap a tree.   First you need to get some spiles and some sort of bucket or bag to hold the sap.   A spile is basically a spigot you insert into the tree. The old traditional spile is metal and the bucket hangs on it.   I use the 5/16” plastic spiles that are intended for tubing. Larger operations connect all the taps to a pipeline that draws the sap to the sugar house.   I just run a short length of tubing from the spile to a 4 or 5 gallon food grade bucket sitting on the ground. I drill a 5/16” hole in the tree about 2” deep that is angled slightly upward so the sap wants to run out of the hole.  When inserting the tap into the tree, tap it lightly into the drilled hole until it is seated. You don’t need to drive it home like a 16 penny nail. You don’t want to tap a tree that is less than 12” in diameter. The experts day a tree from 12-20” can support 1 tap, and trees larger than that can support 2 taps, some even say a tree over 27” can support 3 taps.  Given that I’m tapping trees in the yard and in my neighbor’s yards, I take a very conservative approach, and only put 1 tap in each tree.

One question that often comes up is, what kind of Maple tree can be tapped for syrup.   If you have Sugar Maples, that’s the best tree for the job. They have the highest sugar content in their sap, which means less boiling. Technically you also tap silver, red, black maples, as well as box elders.   My yard is full of Norway maples. I’ve heard different opinions on tapping the Norways. This year I experimented with tapping one of them, and the sap flowed great, and when boiled down with all my other trees, I noticed no difference in the taste of my syrup.

So, now that you know how to tap a tree, and what kind of tree to tap, you need to know when is the best time to tap.   The optimal time to tap is when the evening temperatures are dropping below freezing and the day time temperatures are above freezing.  The change in temperatures causes some type of pressure inside the tree causing the sap to flow. If daytime temps stay below freezing, or if evening temps stay above freezing, the flow of sap will be reduced.  You’ll want to pull taps before the trees start to bud. This year, I tapped my trees on February 20th and I pulled the taps on March 25th. Technically, this year’s weather was still good for collecting for another week or two, but I had pretty much run out of time and was happy with my production for the year.

OK, we’ve covered how to tap, what trees to tap, when to tap, and storing your sap.  The next step is to boil it. Again, not a terribly complicated process, boil gallons and gallons of sap until enough water content is gone that it becomes syrup.   Easy right? Well, yes…but fast, no. It all comes down to surface area. 1 square foot of surface area, will boil off about a gallon per hour. So, if you have 40 gallons of sap, it’ll take about 39 hours of boiling in a 12”x12” pan to make syrup.   That’s a lot of time. How big of a pan you’ll need depends on the size of your hobby operation. This year I only put out 8 taps, but I still collected 163 gallons of sap. Some people simply use a turkey fryer pan over a propane burner. I’ve even read of some folks placing a pan on their gas grill.   My setup is a metal frame that holds 3 steam table pans that are about 20” x 12” each over a homemade wood fired metal arch. I started out using the same steam table pans over a cinder block arch, which worked OK, but wasn’t super efficient. With my current setup, I should technically be able to boil down about 6 gallons per hour.   I probably average more like 5 gallons per hour. This means I can take 40 gallons of sap and make my 1 gallon of syrup in about 8 hours of boiling. Get a comfy lawn chair, set it up near the warmth of the fire, and watch…and contrary to what I’ve read on the internet, a watched pot does actually boil…eventually. Oh, and before I forget, you definitely won’t want to do a full boil in your kitchen.   Boiling sap puts out a lot of steam, sticky steam, something you won’t want in your kitchen.

All that being said, I boil the sap to within a few degrees of syrup over the fire, and bring it inside for the last bit of boiling.  I just find it easier to control. Syrup is syrup at 7 degrees above the boiling temperature of water (212 degrees at sea level). I use a hydrometer to ensure the proper density and don’t rely solely on the thermometer.  An important aspect of making maple syrup is filtering the syrup. The boiling process introduces something called sugar sand to your syrup. It’s technically edible, but it leaves a cloudy sediment in your syrup. If you filter your syrup and bring it to a boil again, more sugar sand is produced.  I filter twice. I filter the syrup when I first bring it inside. I then finish the boil and filter it again. I’ve heard of all sorts of things being used for filters, from old t-shirts, to paper towels, to coffee filters. I have an actual maple syrup filter and line that with a disposable paper pre-filter.  Just be patient, as it takes a while for the syrup to flow through the filter. After the second filter, I put the syrup back in a pan and keep it on low heat so that it stays around 185 degrees for bottling or canning it. You can buy actual syrup bottles, or just use canning jars. I use a ladle to fill my bottles.   Just be sure to put the caps/lids on right away so that you get a good seal as it cools.

…and there you have it.   That pretty much covers the process from start to finish.   I will tell you that everyone’s situation is a little different and results may vary.   This year I tapped 4 Sugar Maples, 2 Red Maples, and 1 Norway Maple, and ended up with about 3 gallons of syrup.  I probably have about 60 hours of tapping, collecting, boiling, and cleaning up all the equipment.   Definitely not cheaper than going to the local farm stand to buy their syrup…but a whole lot more rewarding.

A couple other pointers that may be handy to the first timer backyard syrup producer.

• Start small… If you’re just giving the whole maple sugaring process a try, tap just a couple trees, make it manageable, keep it fun, and figure out your process before you take on more trees.
• Bribe your neighbors…  If your neighbors have some sugar maples, most of the time, they will be willing to let you tap their trees.  Even more so if you offer them some delicious homemade syrup in trade.
• Do your homework…  There are lots of online resources for ideas on backyard sugaring.  In most syrup producing states, during the peak maple season, many producers offer tours of their facilities.   These are all great ways to learn and get tips to help you with your own operation.
• Invite your neighbors… There’s not much that attracts the interest of your neighbors more than a bucket hanging from a front yard maple and smoke billowing from a fire in the backyard.  Before you know it, folks will be gathered around the fire watching sap make the slow transition from near water to syrupy goodness. Why boil alone when you can have a party while you’re at it.
• Experiment…  Once you get the process of making syrup down, try your hand at some maple cream or maple candy.   All you have to do is boil your syrup a little longer and know what to do with it at various temperatures.
• Here are some online resources for tips and equipment that I have used over the years:
  • https://tapmytrees.com/
  • https://leaderevaporator.com/
  • https://www.bascommaple.com/

I hope that sharing my story of maple sugaring has inspired some of you to do some research and give it a try on your own.   You’ve only got about ten months to get ready for next season. Go on, what are you waiting for?