Callie's Sugar Shack

Dear pals, 

We finally made it to Callie's sugar shack. It is behind Callie's house and Callie's Man made it all. It is beautiful. Lady has been calling it the adult clubhouse, because when we have visited a few evenings, it is Callie's Man, her great-uncle and sometimes a friend, standing around with a beer chatting as they monitor everything. 

Phod sitting by the door because it is hot in the shack. He has learned he can just let himself out the back door.  This isn't great because the deer are around. 

Callie's people have about 300 taps. The sap comes into big barrels that are brought to the shack and pumped into this big evaporator. The sap is boiled and boiled and boiled and goes through all the parts of this and when finally it gets to the right temperature (which is about 270F), the syrup is poured out into a barrel (you can see it on the right). To get 1 litre of syrup you have to boil about 40 litres of sap. 

Lee has discovered this is a great fire and likes to curl up by it, and is annoyed that is is constantly being feed and she has to move. 

Not pictured here, but once it comes out of this big evaporator, it spends another hour in a smaller propane operated evaporator. Then finally it is bottled. At our second visit about 17 litres had been bottled and about the same amount was almost ready. It has not been a great season so far because it keeps freezing. The colour of the syrup is a light colour. 

This is a very small operation. Callie's great-uncle used to have 3000 taps (just down the road from us) and our former cleaner's family (about a 15 minute drive) has over 15 000! 

Lady refrained from drinking the syrup as it came out of the evaporator, mostly because it was too hot. She can't wait to get some of the new syrup! 

We hope you enjoyed the visit.