Cost per gallon of syrup

The season cost is the money you spent this season, plus depreciation on equipment and buildings, plus a value for hours nobody was paid for. Cost per gallon is that total divided by the gallons of syrup you made. It follows the cost-of-production worksheets in chapter 11 of the North American Maple Syrup Producers Manual.

Equipment and buildings are spread over their useful life: purchase price divided by years, with no salvage value, the manual’s simplified straight-line method. A $7,500 machine you expect to run for 10 years adds $750 to every season. This is not tax depreciation. For tubing the manual gives 10 to 15 years or longer in one place, 15 to 20 in another, and recommends replacing it every 10 to 15 years because old tubing is harder to clean, so the tubing line starts at 15, the one figure all three allow. Use your own if you know it.

Unpaid hours are counted at what the same work would earn elsewhere, because leaving them out makes a sugarbush look more profitable than it is. Cost per pound divides by the weight of a gallon of syrup: 11.07 lb at 66.9 °Brix and 11.03 lb at 66.0, from the NBS sugar-solution tables. The manual’s dated 2,000-gallon example adds up to $36.73 a gallon from its listed costs, not the printed $36.96, which carries an arithmetic slip. Its dollar figures are illustrations, not a benchmark to compare against.

The categories are the ones Sapline’s cost tracking uses. Certification fees have no category of their own there, so they go under insurance here as well.