Spring 2008
Working Landscape: Boiling for Dollars
By Stephen Russell Payne
Photographed by David Juaire
East of Enosburg Falls, along a muddy road up into the Cold Hollow Mountains sits the home of one of the largest high school sugaring programs in the United States. At the Cold Hollow Career Center sugarhouse — built by students from the combined forestry programs of Enosburg and Richford high schools — sugaring is taught as both a Vermont tradition and an essential vocation for Franklin County youth.
For some students, sugaring will become a key part of their future income. It may even determine whether they can continue to operate their family farm, where "maple money" is often needed to supplement dairy income.
Ed Lidster, who oversees the sugaring as part of his role as Forestry/Natural Resources instructor, says, "Not all students want to go on to college, and for some it's a real chore getting through high school. This forestry program is sometimes the carrot on the end of the stick that gets them to finish high school, while gaining essential knowledge and experience they'll use when they go from graduation to the farm." As part of the forestry program, students also learn logging, forest management, stream bank management and Christmas tree farming.
The Cold Hollow program was launched in 1985 by Charlie Daigle, a well-known forestry instructor and former Vermont State Teacher of the Year who had a vision of a vocational center for sugaring that could teach the skill from the ground up. A local couple, Cheryl and Ward Heneveld, stepped up and arranged for use of their sugar bush; and teachers and students cleared the land and built the sugarhouse, which now sits on Daigle Drive, named in honor of Charlie. Daigle, who died in 1997, basically lived at the sugarhouse during sugaring season, even toward the end of his life when he was only able to sit in a rocker beside the evaporator as his beloved students boiled.
The program is now directed by Lidster, a Connecticut native who began sugaring at age 12. A graduate of the University of Vermont, Lidster went on to work at the university's Proctor Maple Research Lab, where he studied under legendary sugarmaker Sumner Williams. "Sugaring's a bug," Lidster says, "and if it bites you, it's got you."
The Cold Hollow program emphasizes a hands-on approach that teaches every aspect of sugaring, right down to the final barreling, delivery and grading at the buyer, Butternut Mountain Farm in Morrisville.
Lidster says he has noticed that some kids who enjoy the program the most come from sugaring families, in which it's usually only the most senior people — the patriarchs — who get to do the honors of running the sacred evaporator from which the finished syrup is drawn.
"In those families, traditionally someone has to die for another to move up to running the evaporator," Lidster says. "But not here. In our program, each kid has ownership over the whole operation and they learn to do everything from cutting firewood to running the evaporator pans, which is very precise work.
"These students have to be completely focused on what they're doing lest they burn the pan and ruin a very expensive rig."
A Standout Sugarer
Matt Weld has sugaring in his blood. A standout graduate of the Cold Hollow program, Matt grew up on the family farm in Berkshire and began to learn the craft from his father, grandfather and great-grandfather.
By eighth grade, he had 800 taps and was boiling with his cousin. The next year, he entered the Cold Hollow program and had 1,500 taps going, boiling it all himself to produce 15 barrels of syrup.
Last spring, Matt, his father and his brother ran 3,200 taps on pipelines, and burned through 23 cords of wood, all chopped by Matt. One night after a huge sap run, Matt boiled alone in the sugarhouse for 14 hours straight. Not one to waste words, Matt recalls: "That was tough."
After graduating from the Cold Hollow program, Matt, now 20, went to work as a welder for the renowned Leader Evaporator Co. in Swanton. His extraordinary efforts to preserve his family's sugar operation earned him an award from the Vermont Land Trust, which honors students dedicated to carrying on traditional agricultural practices, and he also earned an agriculture production award from the state convention of the Future Farmers of America.
"Any money that he earned went right to the sugar bush," says Cold Hollow's Ed Lidster. "He was instrumental in the rebirth of sugaring on his family's farm."
