With today’s post I will bring the reader up to date on changes to the blog, some of the blog market testing we have done, and then I will provide more detail on the plans for the sugarhouse itself.
If you explore the website, you will find I have changed the name of the sugarhouse from Vermont Sugar Lodge to Vermont Sugar Cabane. While I was doing some work on our search engine optimization with Google, I found there was some confusion with our website and the Sugar Lodge associated with the Vermont Sugarbush ski area. The term "Cabane" means sugarhouse (or sugar shack) in French.
One of the key components of a successful blog is to have individuals like yourself interested in what we have to say or information we are providing. It can be a challenge to reach a potential audience, so I explored ways to make our website more prominent in a Google search. After a weekend afternoon, I managed to get it to appear on the 32nd page of a Google search.
Stepping back and moving forward on a take 2, I signed up with Google ads. This is where you can create an advertisement campaign. The process involves determining under what search do you want to present an advertisement to the potential follower. After many tests, I determined that “Vermont Maple Syrup”, “Stories of Maple Sugaring From Canada”, “Vermont”, “Sugarhouse”, “Sugarbush” were my best prospects. I let this campaign run for three days with 20 people opting to click and come to our website. A second campaign with search terms “Couple’s Journey”, “Teacher and Technologist”, “Making Maple Syrup”, “Early Retirement” turned out to be a much more successful campaign providing three times the results in half the time.
Charla and I discussed a potential longer-term goal might be to sell our maple syrup to our established audience when and if we are successful at building the sugarhouse and making maple syrup. I’m committed to making this work, so much so, I ordered a chainsaw (I needed to feel like we are making progress) online at 4:00 a.m. this morning and we purchased an ATV on our last trip to Vermont. We need to be successful because my neighbors won't appreciate me triming our rose bushes with the chainsaw. More on the recent purchases in a future post.
In an earlier blog post https://www.accordingtojean.blog/post/year-2025-what-the-heck, I provided high-level information on our plan. This section of the post I will get into more detail of the sugarhouse itself. The 17-acre sugarbush we have has a North facing slope. Unfortunately, the highpoint is where there is access to the property, with the low point being remote and is accessible only with a tractor and ATV. Using a “pipeline” vs. “buckets” approach requires that the sugarhouse be built at the bottom of the sugarbush. The picture “Sugar Cabane Sugarbush” is a satellite image of the sugarbush showing the proposed location of the mainlines.
I will provide more detail about the web of tubing in a future post.
The sugarhouse design might be considered a little primitive by today’s standards but will be more advanced than a sugarhouse of yesteryear. We are planning on a cement foundation. The structure itself will be 16’ wide and 24’ long with an attached outdoor sap storage area of 6’ wide and 16’ long. There will also be an attached outdoor wood storage area of 16’ wide and 14’ long. The primary support poles inside of the building will be cut from the property and will be fir, hemlock, or cedar. The outdoor support poles for the sap and wood storage areas will be cedar poles. Cedar wood has properties to prevent rotting overtime so the areas that will be exposed to the elements will be cedar.
The cedar poles will also be cut from the property. Each support pole will have 4’ support beam on each side. The picture “Primary and Secondary Support Poles.” The rafters will be made out of roughcut lumber from a local sawmill (thank you, Warren) and will be built onsite. The hope is once we have the rafters built, we can have an excavator help lift them into place.
There is a section on our blog site called the "Detailed Plan" where the reader can click on the picture that shows 15 slides of different aspects of the plan. Or click here or post the link below to your browser.
“https://www.accordingtojean.blog/_files/ugd/7213c6_05a14e55abad454480b7aa61976ae5fd.pdf”
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