And though this past season, which ended April 16th, produced the most syrup they ever have before - 903 gallons - they would have produced even more- but this winter’s ice storm sent broken limbs and tree tops crashing down on the tubing which froze in the snow. Then there was the time his dad almost burned the shed down and had no choice but to put it out with sap, because there wasn’t any running water.
#Sugarbush truck and tractor pulls how to
Then we correct the process and figure out how to do it a little better the next time.” The Galusha’s have had their share of mishaps like forgetting to close a valve and having syrup spray to the ceiling and onto the floor.
It’s just my nature to want to improve the efficiency of whatever I’m doing, and improve the production.” “I’m not saying we do it right every time. “I’m always trying to make things faster, or bigger and better. “I’m never satisfied with things status quo,” he said, after we completed the tour of the sugar house. Today, the Galusha’s have about 850 acres of land surrounding the tree where Randy and his brother first hung their coffee cans, and they keep expanding every year, simply because of Randy’s commitment to making everything more effective. Randy’s father Jim still helps with building projects and with hauling all the sap from the other sugar bushes a few miles away, Randy’s mom cooks meals for them in the sugar house all the time, and Randy and Jill’s two kids Nathan, 17, and Lindsay, 20, help out as well. “When I met him, he just kind of got me helping out,” Jill said, but that of course escalated into the partnership that continues today. Jill had moved to Thurman from Long Island where she’d been eating pancakes with Aunt Jamima syrup. In the meantime, Randy and Jill met in high school. In time, they replaced the horses with a tractor, upgraded from buckets to tubing, got a truck to gather the sap from all the tubing, built the sugar house that’s still standing today and eventually, they invested in a small evaporator. A friend hand-whittled a yoke out of basswood so they could carry the pales back to the tank on the sleigh. Each year they added more and more buckets until they had 500. They hung coffee cans on trees in front of his mom and dad’s house, until their dad felt sorry for them and started helping. Randy started sugaring with his younger brother when he was about 10. “He’s very fussy about how it looks when it’s in the glass,” said Jill, smiling. “You can see right through it,” Randy said, holding up a glass maple-leaf shaped bottle filled with crystal clear light amber syrup. The syrup is then filtered to remove a fine mineral particulate, called sugar sand, and stored in stainless drums, and filtered again before it’s loaded into retail containers, to ensure a clear product.
It takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup, at a rate of 12 – 15 gallons per hour. The sap is then pumped underground from the vacuum room into a storage tank behind the sugar house, and then into an evaporator, a shiny stainless steel machine five feet wide, 19 feet long, with automatic level controls and alarms on each pan to control temperature.
When sugaring season comes around, you can’t wait.” Randy enjoys the tapping process as well as running the long blue tubes down the mountain, which carry the thousands of drops of sap to a flow about the width of one’s baby finger. “But unfortunately, you gotta do what you gotta do. “It can be pretty grueling,” Randy added. “I don't mind it when it’s nice out,” Jill said, laughing. Each tree was tapped back in early February- a process that is usually done on snowshoes by the Galusha’s and a few other friends.
A breeze rustles through the leaves as Randy explains how trees with larger crowns produce more sap that will be sweeter. Owners Randy and Jill Galusha lead the way toward the sugar bush- 25 acres of naturally grown maples. Randy and Jill Galusha- Maple Sugaring at Toad Hill Maple Farm by Jessica Kane It’s a cool, sunny day at Toad Hill Maple Farm.
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