The sugar maker

Travelling through rural Vermont in the warm, still days of July, I see maple trees stretch across the hilly landscape, beyond the horizon, only making way for glacial lakes and occasional meadows. From the dirt roadside this looks like a wild place, spared from human interference, agriculture or infrastructure. This however, is far from the case – New York was built on Vermont timber to the result of mass de-forestation, followed by mass sheep farming. In the 1800s, granite mining was huge in some areas. Thankfully, the few remaining forests were protected in the 1920s, and Vermont’s mountains have become green with trees once again.

Step off the dirt road into the depths of the forests and you will be waste-high in ferns and wild plants, with a thick canopy of maple leaves above you. Look at the trunks of the trees and you’ll see small round scars in the bark, bare a centimetre in diameter. There will probably be a cluster of them, all on the same side of the tree, about 1.5m high. These little scars are left every spring after the sugar maker’s harvest. Vermont has more sugar maple trees than any other state in America, and so unsurprisingly is the largest producer of maple syrup in the country. I adore maple syrup; on pancakes in the true American way; tossed over chunks of root vegetables with thyme and chilli; in a deeply spiced, sticky, mahogany cake; or even a little in a sausage mix where alongside sage, it gives a sappy, woodsy flavour of bonfire night. I had never really given a thought to where the dark, runny liquid came from. Of course, I knew it was American maple trees, but had never wondered how it was harvested or treated.

Last Saturday evening I met with Clarence Wheeler, a man from the small community of Greensboro. Clarence, like most of his neighbours, is a sugar maker. He lives with his wife on her father’s farm, overlooking Lake Caspian. Clarence is a true man of the local soil. We drove around the surrounding farms, where he told me stories of who farmed which fields and when, the struggles for the dairy industry in Vermont, the wild turkeys he shot down that track, the deer he stalked over this hill and once, the bear he killed by those bee hives, and the trout he caught in the lake. We arrived at the patch of woodland where he taps the maple trees each April. Like any other harvest, no calendar or diary can tell when the harvest will be, that is decided by nature. “The ideal tapping time is when the sun gets warm in the day and the snow begins to melt, then it gets really cold again at night”, says Clarence. “When the tree wants energy to grow leaves, sap is drawn up the tree from the roots. Its water and sugar, food for the tree. If all the branches are on one side of the tree, that’s where I tap, that’s where the sap will be running.”

Clarence explained how the sap is extracted from the tree by hammering a small tap about 2/3 inch into the tree. This little tap is connected to a thin pipe which leads to a main pipe line running downhill to his sugar house. There are around 200 taps off various pipes running down the wood.

Clarence’s sugarhouse was built in the 1940s by his father-in-law who had a large commercial sugar operation. The house is wooden, with a tall, lofty ceiling. A wood store at the back of the building is full of old boiling equipment – vats, holding tanks, burners. Compared to the equipment Clarence uses, they are massive; Clarence makes 2 gallons of syrup a day for around three weeks a year. His father-in-law made 12 gallons a day.

Once the sap is in the sugarhouse, Clarence must boil it. 14 gallons of sap makes 1 gallon of syrup.

I was curious as to why Clarence made syrup. It is hard work; taking many long hours in the cold wood, he can’t make any money to speak of from it. There is nothing particularly special or unique about his product, it is very good syrup, but every other person in the area does the same. Clarence says making sugar is in his blood. He has the wood and the sugar house, and so he makes the syrup every spring. His sugarhouse has no electricity, no gas and no mobile phone signal. It is lit by a small oil lamp and heated by the wood burning furnace below the vat.

“I love coming here to my sugarhouse. I wouldn’t want electricity here. This is a tradition of my family, of the area, of Vermont. It’s in my blood.”