EVERYTHING THEY NEED TO KNOW THEY LEARNED IN THE SUGARHOUSE
(This article appeared in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, Northampton, MA in March 2001)

By LARRY PARNASS

Well, not everything. But consider. Like life itself, maple sugaring is brutish and short. Sugaring is a daylong chore strung out over six weeks. It can no more be put off than a house on fire. From a distance, sugaring looks peaceful. Wrapped in a sweet mist, the sugarer waits. Stung by winter cold, we prefer this promise, this poetry. "A sap run is the sweet goodbye of winter," naturalist John Burroughs wrote in 1886. "It is the fruit of the equal marriage of the sun and the frost." The sugarer's muscles ache, though. If golf is a good walk spoiled, sugaring is a spring's dawn dimmed. Rewards come in buckets, but only after dues are paid. It consumes hours of labor, as that only faintly sweet sap is reduced by boiling in an evaporator until it reaches 219 degrees, and becomes syrup. It tests families. It teases with cold winters that keep sap still, even on warm days. When sugarers talk of the trade's costs, they don't bother to count their hours. They can't help themselves. "This is an addiction. People get the bug," says Peter Tessier, a Northampton native who, with his wife, Betty Ann, runs a Cummington sugarhouse. Like the cloying scent that insinuates into sugarhouse planks, this work at trees, at tanks, at fireboxes, over evaporators and in farm kitchens doesn't let go. Sugaring takes its practitioners to school and delivers its lessons. Sugaring changes people who do it as sure as spring. If its lessons fail to take, there is next time. So what does it teach? We asked those who've been to school. Sugaring, they say, instills the importance of:

PERFECTING ONE'S PATIENCE.

"It's kind of like a silent thing. Everyone just goes very slowly. They go to the next tree. If there's a repair to be made in the pipeline, they do that. You try not to waste a step. Everyone's very methodical. If you see a break in the line, you don't get upset or excited. You just take your tool out and cut the line and fix it and go on to the next task." BETTY ANN TESSIER, Cummington, whose children, Greg and Amy, help her and her husband, Peter, staff their Fairgrounds Road sugar operation.

"There's a lot of boredom to it that I don't like too well. You sit there and boil and boil and boil and boil. It gets rather boring after awhile, but pays off. You walk around and keep checking everything, and make sure it's doing fine." WILLIAM GRAY, Ashfield, one of the deans of Valley sugaring, now in his 40th year in the business, after starting at age 35.

AFTER SHOWING UP, PAY ATTENTION

"You've got to sit here and wait for it to get to the right temperature. The other day, [my husband] Bill and I were trying to can syrup, and our son Brian wasn't here to watch the evaporator. It normally takes the three of us to do that. Brian had gone home. All of a sudden I looked at the evaporator and I said, 'Uh, the syrup's starting to turn real dark here.' Bill's like, 'Quick, quick, open up the float and let some sap in there.' It had gotten too hot. The other night, Brian started up and the first thing that happened was he burned the pans in it. They had to clean them all out and start over."- DEB TURNER, Williamsburg, whose family runs the Lawton Family Sugarhouse on Route 9 just west of the town's center. Turner's husband, Bill, erected a new sugarhouse this past year.

"You've got to be clicking on all cylinders." JOHN BOISVERT, Hadley, who runs the Boisvert Farm Store and sugarhouse on River Road in Hadley with his brother, Joseph.

"If you leave it in too long, it will burn. There are two thermometers here. In terms of the fire, you have to boil for a while to get it down right. You'd think it would be simple, just throwing wood in it. But if you don't put the wood in just right, crisscross it enough to leave enough air in it, so the fire can get through it, it won't burn as hot. You can't make it too hot. The hotter the fire, the faster it evaporates. ... If you can't stand the heat, you're in the wrong business. "You can get into trouble when you've been boiling for six or seven hours, everything's been going good, and you start getting tired and you start laying back a little bit - and not paying attention. When did that happen? Last week. One day it went from syrup at 219 up to 230 degrees in less than 60 seconds." (The batch was ruined.) BILL TURNER, Williamsburg.

"I was boiling one night as it started snowing, until about 2:30 in the morning. As it went on, the 'draw-off' of syrup [when the finished product is taken out of the evaporator] was changing, because the atmospheric pressure was changing with the storm. At one draw-off it was coming off at a half a degree lower. You've got to pay attention. I use a hydrometer and a thermometer. You're always there. "People laugh at me. When my relatives do show up to watch, I'm circling the evaporator. ... You can get lulled into a sense that everything's going along just fine, but if you don't pay attention, a valve will stick here or there. You're not focused on one thing, you have to pay attention to the whole process." KRIS JAMROG, Conway, a 26-year-old sugarer who is studying turf grass management at the University of Massachusetts and trained in maple sugaring as a teen-ager with Paul Zononi of Williamsburg.

"You have to be there. You can't learn this from a textbook." JENNIFER ALOISI, Westhampton, who at 25 is already expanding farm operations from her parents, Leo and Anita, who manage the 150-acre Hanging Mountain Farm.

"You have to pay strict attention to all the details, especially while you're boiling. Sugar solutions boil under their own laws. I've talked to physicists and chemists about boiling solutions and sugar solutions. Over the years I've learned more and more, but I still don't have some of the answers about why the steam is thicker sometimes than not, why is it bubbling up - or bubbling down. Why does it boil for a long time without becoming syrup and all of a sudden become syrup, so you have a lot to draw off right away? Every sugarmaker knows this happens. But nobody can explain it. It's not terribly predictable, which is where the art of sugarmaking comes in. There's an art to boiling sap. You have to pay strict attention to details." TOM McCRUMM, Ashfield, who has three jobs this time of year: sugaring at his South Face Farm, overseeing its restaurant (which served 3,000 people over 12 days, its busiest season ever) and running the Massachusetts Maple Producers Association.

TEACHING THE VALUE OF WORK

"I think it's taught a lot of kids that live and work on a farm a lot of responsibility. They know if they don't do it, it's not going to get done... We've had kids come through the years after school to collect sap. They've come faithfully, without any kind of supervision. It needs to be done. It's very hard work. Everybody works as a team." ANITA ALOISI, Westhampton.

"One requisite for sugaring is youth. You have to have young people helping you. They have limitless energy, and that's one thing you need, in order to put up the buckets and especially go through deep snow to carry the sap back to the collecting trailer. "I was very lucky because I had a set of twins called the McCools, who worked for me for three or four years. They all work for me for three or four years, and then they get interested in women and cars and outgrow it. Later I got another set of twins called the McClouds. These were fraternal twins, the first ones were identical. "But now I've run out of twins and I have two boys helping. I'm afraid I disappointed them this year, because I didn't sugar. ... I seem to be pulling in my horns a little bit. I'm not sure I'm going to continue it, because of the effort involved." JAMES AVERILL, Westhampton, a retired physician who has been sugaring for decades at the top of Clapp Road.

"This year, our son Greg, who is 16, worked hard, and worked without complaint. He just worked and worked and worked. He worked as long as everyone did." BETTY ANN TESSIER, Cummington.

GIVING THE WEATHER ITS DUE

"Weather is a huge factor. You have to be patient. You can't do anything about it. Yeah, you get frustrated at times. You get discouraged. You just have to learn to deal with it." JOHN BOISVERT, Hadley.

"Just 'cause it's 40 degrees doesn't mean the sap's going to run. Depends on the wind. There's a lot to it, in order for it to run. If the wind's right, it can be 34, 35 degrees and it will run good. [My wife] Deb's uncle Raymond [Lawton] could walk out of the house in the morning, and the> sun would be out and it would be 40 degrees and he'd say, 'Nope, sap's not going to run.' I'd say, 'You're crazy.' But he'd be right. The feel of the air and the wind and being 80-some years old, he knew what it was going to do. I haven't figured it out yet." BILL TURNER, Williamsburg.

"We never got all our taps out this year because of that last storm. That did it. We said, 'To heck with any more.' That buried everything. Our pipelines are buried. They still seem to run pretty good, but I know a lot of them are frozen. When it warms up, they seem to thaw right out. It's not a real hard ice in the lines, because it's got sugar in it. ... You cripe a little, and say, 'Well, we can't do anything about it.'" WILLIAM GRAY, Ashfield, who set 1,800 taps this year and was aiming for 2,000 before the March 30 snowstorm.

"Our industry is so dependent on the weather, more so than any other type of agriculture. In other agriculture, weather is important, but not on a day-to-day basis. Five days of temperatures of a certain level out of a growing season of three or four months isn't a big deal. But you get five days out of a production season of five weeks, it's a big deal, if the weather's not right. We've all learned that we get the weather that Mother Nature gives us. And we have absolutely no control over it and there's no need to complain about it. It is what it is. You have to be willing to take what you get, and that's a good lesson in life too, just to be willing to accept what life gives you and make the best of it." TOM MCCRUMM, Ashfield, who scaled back on the number of taps he set this year, due to lack of help and heavy snow.

COUNTING ON YOUR COMMUNITY

"When sugaring starts, it's this big activity. It's hard to explain. All of a sudden, you see people you haven't seen all winter. They stop by to see how you're doing. Everybody seems so excited because we're sugaring. It's really just the start of spring. Maybe every other year but this one. This one was a little bit tough." BETTY ANN TESSIER, Cummington.

"There's a total spirit of cooperation among sugarmakers. If my neighbor's sap pump breaks down today, two or three might appear on his doorstep tomorrow from other sugarmakers. There's this feeling of sharing. Everybody works together. A good example is J.P. Welch over in Worthington, when his place burned last year. There was a great outpouring of offerings of help." PETER TESSIER, Cummington, for whom sugaring skipped a generation. His late maternal grandfather sugared at a farm in Quebec before moving his family to Granby, and opening a sugarhouse there.

"Our son Brian likes to boil at night. Then his buddies all come by. Some nights you go by and there'll be four or five trucks here. They're all just sitting here, hanging out. They'll go down and get a pizza. The other night, he was here until after 2 a.m. boiling. The sap ran so good he collected it three times that day. He went out sometime between midnight and 1 o'clock to get the last of it. We were in bed sleeping. A buddy rode up on his snowmobile and said there was more sap. Brian took the tractor up and collected it. They boiled until 2 o'clock or so and then went up the road to Keith Dufresne's sugarhouse and stayed there and talked to him until 5 in the morning." DEB TURNER, Williamsburg

SEEKING STRENGTH IN FAMILY

"Family working together is a big thing. My family's close. We stay close and work together and help each other out. Is it smooth all the time? No. A lot of times it's not. Somebody has an idea about one thing and somebody wants to do it another way. You just have to compromise and work it out... It's learning how to get along. You just form a bond. You become like one, one group. It's a team." JOHN BOISVERT, Hadley, who has been tending a new, larger evaporator this year, to keep up with the farm's increasing maple production. The Boisverts set 3,000 taps this year.

"When Peter's father was alive, when we were building the sugarhouse, his parents would come up and help us a lot. Even though Peter's father couldn't climb up and down the mountain with us, he would come early on a weekend and fill the firebox in the evaporator and have it ready. The paper and kindling would be there. On Sundays when his parents knew we were up here working really hard, they'd bring us dinner. One weekend we came here and Peter's father had sided one whole side of the sugarhouse." BETTY ANN TESSIER, Cummington, whose property is part of the farm once operated by Charles Thayer and has been tapped since early last century. Its maple trees, on a south-facing hill, produce the more valuable light syrup most years.

LIVING AND WORKING EFFICIENTLY

"With sugaring, there is always some new thing. Most sugarmakers can't just stop and keep the status quo, and use everything from last year. They're thinking ahead. There's always some new piece of equipment or some new technology. ... The idea is we want to work smarter and not harder." PETER TESSIER, Cummington.

"When Deb's brother Don and I started getting involved in sugaring with her uncle, we were both working. Raymond was getting too old to set sap buckets and we didn't have time. We decided we were going to do a pipeline. Her uncle thought we were the craziest fools to spend money on a pipeline. He said it was never going to work. One day, it was pouring rain outside. With buckets, they'd fill up with water and you'd get nothing, even with covers. The sap was running into the sugarhouse in a full stream, out of the pipe. He finally admitted, 'That's a pretty good idea.' BILL TURNER, Williamsburg

"You try to get more efficient. I set 4,000 taps, and basically do it myself. I add little things every year that makes it easier. ... Sometimes I want to level the place and start all over again, to make it more efficient. As it is, there are additions upon additions. The wiring's not quite right. There's not enough room here, or there." PAUL ZONONI, Williamsburg, a 30-year sugarer whose sugarhouse stands on the bank of the Mill River, just off Route 9 west of the town's center.

"You're always trying to think of something else to make it work better. If something doesn't work right, you're standing there trying to figure out what you can do so it works better tomorrow. ... You go to different sugarhouses to see what works. You come across guys that have come up with some really good ideas, stuff that they should patent because it's so good, and some do." KRIS JAMROG, Conway

"Even with plastic pipeline, the technology is changing all the time. In the past couple of years they've come out with permanent types of tubing that are made to withstand the rigors of being out all year-round." PETER TESSIER, Cummington

GIVING SOMETHING BACK TO THE TREES

"At the same time I'm getting my sugar wood, I'm also thinning out the trees in the stands, so the maple trees have less competition. You're always practicing forestry in your sugarbush with an eye to how you want to develop the stand, and which trees you want to keep. ... You're always walking through the sugarbush. You know every inch of it." KRIS JAMROG, Conway

"The road maples, which should produce more because they're out in the open, are actually producing less because of the salt. It's destroying some of our trees. ... There's so many factors. Each tree is so different. The way a tree grows is part of its environment. Whether it's growing straight. Whether it was split in a thunderstorm. ... When I look at a tree and I'm getting ready to tap, I look for last year's hole, or the last two years. I try to stay away from the holes as best I can. Then I look up and see how well the crown's doing. If there are bare branches, then I know the tree is having health issues." JENNIFER ALOISI, Westhampton

"We donate three maple trees every year to the town of Hadley. They plant them wherever the town feels it's necessary. We tap the trees, so we want to be giving something back. We want the trees to survive. We want them to be around for another couple hundred years." JOHN BOISVERT, Hadley, who with his brother Joe pays Hadley to tap town-owned trees, in addition to working a family sugarbush in Conway and another area in Montague.

LEARNING FROM YOUR ELDERS

"My great uncle, Raymond Lawton, was the type that didn't talk. I think that's why he'd come down in the morning a lot and boil, because then he didn't have to deal with people. He'd talk once he got to know you, but otherwise, he was pretty quiet, like our son Brian. Sometimes when Brian talks, he sounds just like him. He taught Brian a lot about different things, like oxen. We had never even thought of having oxen. "When he got older and needed help around the farm, Brian started going up. The year that he died, he gave Brian a pair of steers for Christmas. The day that he died, he was out in his shop fixing an old sleigh to hook up to the oxen. We were planning sleigh rides with the 4-H kids up at our house that weekend. Raymond was out there in the shop. He hadn't been feeling good all winter. He came in the house and told Alta, who was his lady friend, that he didn't feel good and he got on the bed and died. "But he was out there doing what he wanted to do. I asked Alta if we should cancel the sleigh rides. No, she said, Raymond would have wanted it." DEB TURNER, Williamsburg

"My kids feel the same way about this piece of land that my husband does. He did something right along the way, to give them the family value and the tradition and the generations. ... When their grandfather, Leo Aloisi, was still alive, in later years, they'd sit and talk with him a lot. The kids were in college. It got to be a tradition that when they came home, we'd have breakfast at the farm and grandpa would come down and tell them stories. About sleeping in the old farmhouse. About waking up in the morning with piles of snow in the room because of the cracks in the walls. About when he was a teen-ager and first started working here on the farm, when they used to gather the sap with a team of horses and would go up on the mountain. They just soaked up the traditions he was talking about." ANITA ALOISI, Westhampton

DOING IT NOW, NOT LATER

"The thing about maple sugaring is that it's the epitome of having to do what you've got to do and do it now, period. No other questions. You can't put it off for tomorrow. You don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. First of all, you make better syrup if you boil your sap right away. If you've got eight hours of boiling ahead of you, if you put it off until tomorrow, you might have three times the sap, then you're always behind the eight ball. "You have to be prepared ahead of time for everything that can go wrong, because it will." TOM MCCRUMM, Ashfield

LEARNING TO ENDURE

"It is year round. You're working on next year's wood. You're working on the lines. You're fixing pumps that broke. This time of the season, you have all you can do just to keep up with the sap. You're tapped out. Especially this year. I was on snowshoes for four days." KRIS JAMROG, Conway

"This year was torture. It was out-and-out torture. Behind the sugarhouse here it's so steep, and the snows were so deep. You try to wear snowshoes, but because of the steepness, you almost need mountaineering gear. You'd slide down. You'd go two steps up and slide back three. And then you take the snowshoes off and try to do it without the snowshoes. By the time you'd tapped on line to the top, you were done, you felt like you were totally exhausted. You couldn't go on. But you'd done only 30 taps and you had another 2,300 to go. It was very discouraging. Somehow or other, we managed to get most of our taps tapped." PETER TESSIER, Cummington, who planned to spend all of this week cleaning lines, slipping not on wild leeks, as usual, but in snow.

"We used to go in on snowshoes to set taps. I used to carry a 30-pound tapper on my back, with snowshoes. I'm just a little guy. I don't know how I ever did it. I used to be strong. ... This is more like the kind of year we used to have way back ... a little worse. My uncle tells about when he was using horses, they'd have to shovel so the horses could get up on the hill. That must have been pretty bad." WILLIAM GRAY, Ashfield

"In the beginning, we did all our collecting by hand, in buckets, with help from kids. We've taught kids how to drive tractors. We've taught kids how to tap trees. When collecting, they'd go long distances, up hills. They'd go up the hills with these buckets and collect into the pails, get them nice and full and then come sliding down the hill. They fall down and get all the sap poured all over them. And they keep coming back for more." ANITA ALOISI, Westhampton

"The first week you're out there, and things are starting to run, you are picking these buckets up for the first time in a year. The first week, you're in pain. You're in a lot of pain. After school during sugar season, a friend from up the road and I used to come work from 3 to 5 or 3 to 6, depending on when the sun came down. We'd do two runs, do the gathering.. You learn to do it evenly on your body, so you're not pulling out one arm or breaking your back. That's the most important thing I've ever learned. How to pick it up with my legs, since I want to be able to do this for another 40 or 60 years." JENNIFER ALOISI, Westhampton