Portable "Sugar Shack" Cooks Maple Syrup

Portable "Sugar Shack" Cooks Maple Syrup MISCELLANEOUS EQUIPMENT Miscellaneous 34-2-23 "After tasting some pure maple syrup that my daughter and son-in-law made, I decided to build a wood-fired maple syrup cooker of my own," says John Siefker, Saline, Mich. "I made it portable so I could easily put it away in the off-season." Siefker's home is located in the middle of a 15-acre woodlot, which supplies him with ample firewood and sugar maples to tap. He uses his pickup or ATV to pull the 2-wheeled cooker, which has a distinctive rounded roof. "The local cemetery had a 2-wheeled trailer frame which they gave me. And a local fireplace installer had a reject double wide steel fireplace insert on his junk pile. The only thing I bought was the chimney pipe, which cost $35," says Siefker. "The fireplace insert's glass doors allow me to check on the fire without losing any heat. And the enclosure allows me to work in most weather conditions." The fireplace insert had a 2-level top. Siefker welded the fireplace insert to a 1-in. galvanized tube frame that's bolted to the trailer. He puts two pans on the top level and two on the lower level. The upper "pre-cooker" pans drip sap down into the lower pans for final cooking. "Most maple syrup sap cookers are stationary. Because mine is portable I can bring it closer to our house where I can watch it, then store it in my barn for the rest of the year or move it to my daughter and son-in-law's place a mile away from where I live. I can also orient it away from the prevailing winds," says Siefker. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, John Siefker, 10361 Moon Rd., Saline, Mich. 48176 (ph 734 429-1279; gsiefker@comcast.net).

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