Buy, Distribute, or help Harvest Pure Maple Syrup at Pleasant Hill Outdoor Camp
Pleasant Hill produces its own yearly supply of pure Maple Syrup. We sell large and small quantities to individuals and businesses and use the syrup in our camp kitchen year round. We are lucky at Pleasant Hill to have a perfect hill on which to tap trees. This allows our system to primarily run on gravity flow. We also have a vacuum pump to help keep the low spots flowing.
Volunteers can contribute in several ways:
- Assist in the syrup making process. Wood cutting, splitting, line maintenance and bottling.
- Buy our delicious syrup anytime with one click
- Distribute syrup at local markets, retailers, or churches and return the proceeds back to the camp.
Maple Syrup Open House 2024
Join us March 10th, 2024 from 10am-2pm for our annual Maple Syrup Open House! There will be a free pancake breakfast included with sausage which will be served with our own Maple Syrup. There will also be crafts available and homemade ice cream. We hope to see you there!
The Process…
- Maple trees are tapped with one to three taps per tree depending on the size of the tree. The taps are hooked together, then the trees are linked into larger tubes which feed into one main line.
- Through this system, the sap runs into two 500 gallon stainless steel tanks. From the tanks, the sap flows into the evaporator which sits on a custom built wood fired stove, built by Aaron & Dick Baird. The sap is boiled down into syrup using fallen and dead trees culled from over 200 acres of woods.
- Our evaporator is custom built and donated by Morton Salt. The entire finishing process is housed in our syrup barn at the foot of the hill.
- When the sap has boiled down almost completely it is filtered, finished and bottled. It takes about 50 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup.
- We sell the finished product and use it in our camp kitchen year round. It is served with our pancake breakfast and flavors many of our camp dishes such as our maple glazed ham, baked beans and more.
