Maple sugaring is 'labor of love'

Dan Giguere fills his evaporator with maple sap using a temporary line at the Danville Sugarhouse in the Danville neighborhood of Auburn on Maine Maple Sunday. Giguere’s main sap line froze overnight and he had to divert the sap around the ice blockage. “That’s the enemy of this place — the ice,” Giguere said. He took over operations of the sugarhouse in January after it had not been used the past couple of maple syrup seasons. The Lisbon Falls native said he had been looking for a change in his life when he discovered the 56-acre property. “It’s a labor of love,” he said, adding that he used to boil sap with his grandfather “on the side of a mountain up near the Allagash.”

Reed Garfein, 10, of Auburn carries wood into the Danville Sugarhouse in the Danville neighborhood of Auburn on Maine Maple Sunday. Garfein helped sugarhouse owner Dan Giguere load wood into the evaporator while Giguere boiled down sap to make maple syrup. Garfein, his mother, Shannon, father Josh, sister Flora, and brother Milo hiked about a quarter-mile through the woods to get to one of the first sugarhouses that they planned to visit Sunday.

The Danville Sugarhouse was once served by the Rock Maple Mountain Railroad, a rail line by which Raymond Hearn would bring visitors to his sugarhouse aboard a gas-powered engine with five work cars. Hearn’s son, Bob, still runs a small sap house in Auburn.

Dan Giguere uses a snow machine and an ATV to collect sap on his maple grove in Danville. He has 1,100 taps out this spring.

Dan Giguere fires up the evaporator at the Danville Sugarhouse for Maine Maple Sunday. The sugarhouse had fallen into disrepair after not being used for a number of years.

“You run like a monkey,” Dan Giguere said of collecting firewood for his evaporator. “This thing is hungry.”

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