Hi, I'm Steven! During February 2021, I was approaching the one-year anniversary of living in my parents' house in Vermont due to COVID and I found a maple-syrup-making kit that my brothers and I had bought for my dad in 2002. It was essentially a couple of plastic bags to hang from trees and collect sap, which we boiled down with a turkey fryer and a camping stove. We could only store a few gallons of sap at a time, and made 1.1 gallons the first year, most of which were stored in leftover jars from jams, tomato sauce, and salsa. But each year we have expanded and upgraded our equipment and spent more time to make 8 gallons in 2022,13.5 gallons in 2023, 19.5 in 2024 and 21.5 in 2025!