The Sugarmaker Who Still Boils the Old Way

Most of Vermont's syrup now comes off efficient, oil- or pellet-fired rigs, and reverse-osmosis machines that strip water before the boil even begins. Outside Cabot, the Pelletier family has chosen the harder road: a wood-fired evaporator in a shack their great-grandfather built.

It means splitting cords of firewood all autumn, then feeding the firebox in twenty-minute shifts through the night when the sap is running hard. The payoff, they insist, is in the flavor — a faint smokiness and a depth they say the fast rigs never quite match.

Whether or not a taster could pick it out in a lineup almost misses the point. What the old method preserves is a way of being present to the season. When the sap is running, the whole family is in that shack, sticky and sleepless and happy, passing the same worn thermometer they've used for decades. The syrup is only part of what they're making. The rest is the memory of having made it together.