Hamilton's Pure Maple Products is a family operation that has been operating for over five generations. Both Larry and Phyllis where raised in families that produced maple syrup. They can even remember a time when maple syrup was the only sweetner in the kitchen! In 1872, when Larry's great grandfather Thomas Hamilton and his wife Emeline started making syrup, they used steel pans over a cast iron arch and they fired with wood. They used wooden buckets instead of the metal used in that time. They also used wooden storage tanks and hewn out troughs instead of the stainless steel tanks and plastic pipes that we use today. The family operation started with an old wood fired arch and pan system. Long nights of keeping the fire stoked and days of gathering the sap from the buckets kept everyone busy. In those days, sap was gathered using a sled pulled by a team of horses or oxen. The syrup that was produced was mainly for family and town use. Then along came the gasoline engine. Upon the arrival of the gasoline engine the work in the maple woods was sped up dramatically, along with the rest of the world. The invention of the first power tapper helped our family tap the trees in a much more orderly fashion, and the gas powered tractor sped up the gathering of the sap as well. Back at the sugar house, syrup was still being produced using the old wood fired evaporator and pans with steam flooding the sugar house. Today, we use state-of-the-art equipment to produce the highest quality maple syrup possible. We use plastic tubing instead of buckets and natural gas instead of wood. We also use piggy back pans, steam hoods, and ceramic blankets to get the sap that we collect from a sugar maple tree into syrup as fast as possible. Also, our sugar house has moved out of the old woods and has sped up dramatically from the days of the horse and buggy. We now put out 9,000 taps and make between 1,000 and 2,000 gallons of syrup each year. We now use a 4x12 stainless steel evaporator system with a piggy back system to preheat the sap using the energy from the steam of the boiling sugar. This allows energy to be saved and produces a higher quality product much quicker. Another way we save a lot of time is by using our reverse osmosis machine, which eliminates as much as 50% of the water concentration before evaporation.