Spring 2008
My Vermont: The Dream in the Steam
Sugaring begins at 50
By Geoffrey Gevalt
It's March and late at night, so late I don't want to know the time. I am outside under my "sugar roof" watching sap boil. My family is inside asleep. One light burns in the kitchen, a beacon. It's 22 degrees; forecast of sunny and 40-plus tomorrow — another run coming. A spotlight from the rafter shines on the steam from the evaporator pan, a tiny two feet by three feet. I'm nearly out of sap and am determined to squeeze out just a little more syrup before shutting down for the night.
I am, by every possible definition, an amateur at this. I tap 40 to 50 trees a year. I use third-hand buckets and the new narrow-gauge taps. In a good year I will haul some 500 gallons of sap in clean five-gallon paint buckets, each weighing about 40 pounds. That's more than two tons of sap by the time I'm done.
I've been sugaring eight years. Each year I scorch the pan, bang my knuckles, spill sap, run out of wood, gouge my head, burn my fingers, spill some syrup and, miraculously, produce eight to 12 gallons of syrup that amaze my friends and relatives (out-of-staters) and soothe our taste buds just about every day of the year.
I started, as we all do, on a rock hearth dug down in the snow and using a kitchen pot to boil. I have, as we all do, graduated to cement blocks and a bigger pan and then to a real evaporator pan and arch. And, as we all do, I constantly feel the siren call: more taps, bigger evaporators; bring on the tubes and a vacuum pump. And, oh, wouldn't that stainless steel, motorized filtration press be nice? And the gas-fired finisher so I could bottle outside? And reverse osmosis!
Late at night, like now, I imagine a full-sized sugarhouse and 1,000 taps and stacks of empty gallon cans with fancy labels. I get hung up, as I always do, with the label: What would I call this place, this three-acre opening in the woods where I live in Hinesburg? Hardly a farm, even with our rangy chickens. No name comes to me. The dream disappears with the steam. I reach for the tasting spoon. Mighty fine.
My watershed year was 2002. On my 50th birthday my uncle and aunt bestowed on me a gift of $500 — $10 a year to "buy something frivolous," my aunt said. Hmm, I replied, I've got just the idea.
In February I found a small evaporator pan for sale at a sugaring supply shop in East Montpelier. "I'd like to come up on Tuesday. How early are you open?" "Early enough," the man said.
At 8:15 a.m. on a Tuesday in mid-February I was fifth in line. I was youngest by far and the only one wearing a tie.
I waited and watched. The old timers lingered, asking me questions with a twinkle. "Yep, that's how I got started," said one. "How many taps you got now?" I asked. "Oh, by the time I'm done here today, about 15-hundred," the gentleman responded, adding, "but my wife doesn't know that yet." I heard the story about how one of them had a sugar shack made of plastic tarps. "Not a good mix — fire and plastic tarps," he said. The group guffawed.
Armed with equipment, pointers and stories, I left East Montpelier feeling like somehow, in that short space of time, I had finally found Vermont.
And anyone can find it in March; go visit a sugarhouse and you'll see. I visited one at about 1 a.m. and was handed a can of beer before I'd even introduced myself. I went to another where the evaporator looked like a Greyhound bus with its back-end chopped off; the man has 20-thousand taps. (Goodrich's Maple Farm in Cabot; don't miss it!) I've talked plenty with UVM's Proctor Maple Research Center and learned that narrower taps help the tree heal faster and that global warming IS affecting maple trees.
But mostly I've learned on my own. I've learned which trees produce the most, that a south wind stops the run, and that somehow, mysteriously, when we start boiling, friends appear out of nowhere, sometimes late at night, with six-packs or kids or food or nothing at all — just time.
I'm tired. I reach over for a filter, tie it to the spigot on the side and drain two quarts into the stainless pail. I pour the last two buckets of cold sap into the pan and shut the damper. Walking to the corner of the structure, I reach for the light switch and look, absently, toward the woods. I am startled. Dozens of pairs of eyes reflect from the darkness: curious deer on the move. I step out of the light into the trees and watch. Slowly, one by one, the eyes disappear and I hear crunching in the snow as they wander away.
I turn, switch off the light and make my way to the house.