Sugar Wagon Makes Sap Gathering Easy

Sugar Wagon Makes Sap Gathering Easy MISCELLANEOUS EQUIPMENT Miscellaneous 19-5-10 To eliminate the job of lugging 1,600 buckets of maple sap out of the woods by hand every season, a Canadian sugarer built a one-of-a-kind "sugar wagon." "Before I built this rig two years ago, we'd need six men to gather the sap between March 15 and April 15," says Willis Arthur of Huntingdon, Quebec. "Now we do it with one tractor driver and three men on the hoses and get twice as much done in the same amount of time. We've gathered as much as four or five tank fulls in six hours." Arthur's "sugar wagon" consists of a 600 gal. stainless steel vacuum milk tank he he got from a local dealer. It mounts in an old International 540 manure spreader. Arthur fitted a vacuum pump run by a 5 hp gas engine on the front of the tank. He ran two 3/4-in. dia. hoses from the vacuum pump to the tank and ran a 1-in. dia. hose from the tank to a 5-gal. over-flow pail. Two 35-ft. hoses and one 45-ft. hose, each fitted with a manual shut-off valve 2 ft. from the end, attach to the tank. Arthur pulls the sap hauler through the woods with a Ford 5610 4-WD tractor. Workers stick the hoses into buckets to suck out the sap. With the vacuum pump running at 24 psi, each hose can empty a 2-gal. bucket of sap in 10 to 12 seconds. "It makes sap-gathering a pleasure in-stead of a chore," Arthur says. Including the new hose and gasoline engine he used, Arthur has $1,750 (Canadian) invested in the machine. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Willis Arthur, 2281 Hwy. 138, Huntingdon, Quebec, Canada JO5 1H0 (ph 514-264-6751).

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