The first time Vince and Allison Bolduc made maple syrup, they tapped a few maples around their home using hand-me-down taps, hung milk jugs from the trees and lugged the sap back to their driveway to boil it. Their outdoor stove was constructed out of an old doorless dishwasher tipped on its back, fastened with a smokestack made from old pipes and a scrap door for the fire.
More than ten years later, the pair are seasoned hobbyist sugarmakers. They now have about 120 metal buckets and the dishwasher has since died; in its place sits an evaporator in a small sugarhouse they built by hand at their South Burlington home.