Tapping Maple trees and making syrup is part of my families Spring activities. I would like to add that we share in this "operation" with some close friends Joe and Martine. We started out about 6 years ago with about 50 taps, now we are up to about 250, with about 150 on the trees as i write. When we began we used an old stainless steel flat pan set up on a few cinder blocks, with the fire underneath to boil the sap down to the sweet stuff. We have just set up our newest piece of equipment, a leader 2x6 drop flue evaporator. These things are one hell of a design. They burn a lot less wood and most of the heat from the burning wood goes into the boiling. After 5 years of burning the amount of about half the wood we need to heat our house to make syrup, this evaporator is a going to make life a lot easier. In turn we can increase the amount of taps we have and burn the same amount of wood that we have used in the past. This is really exciting for us. Our goal is to produce enough syrup and sugar to become completely independent of cane sugar and the like. Of coarse we still love and will use the local honey produced in the area by some of our friends.