Sugaring – Old or New?

IMG_5421aWhat do you think of when you think of sugaring—buckets and gathering tubs, or tubing and vacuum? It is interesting that most photographs of sugaring feature the old style. If you go to Google Images and search for “maple sugaring,” you will find many pictures of buckets but not many pictures of tubing. We are nostalgic about our past. Even at Yankee Farm Credit: the back cover of our 2008 annual report features a sugaring photo that is more old than new.

But most maple sap nowadays is collected with tubing. One of the larger sugaring operations in Yankee’s territory is Joe Russo’s sugarbush in Belvidere, Vermont: The Green Mountain Maple Sugar Refining Company. Below is Joe standing under the pipelines that bring sap from more than 70,000 taps into his sugarhouse:

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