by Bea Peterson
Every year it seems Dick Ogden finds another way to take more of the work out of making maple syrup. This year he added a steamaway cover over the evaporator. It improves efficiency by 75 percent.
Dick already has a reverse osmosis machine in place that removes 57 percent of the water from the sap before he even starts boiling. They boiled on February 19 and 28. Now with this weather they are boiling every day. Ogden expects conditions to improve when the temperature drops, keeping the two of them busy for a while yet.