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  • Matt Rathbun

RATHBUN'S MAPLE SUGAR HOUSE


I got into sugaring when my father did it, and I can remember being a little kid, like six or seven, just going out there and watching him boil. My grandfather would also go out there and help him. They just passed it on through to me. I remember when I was twelve or thirteen, I’d get up, grab the tractor before school and collect a load of sap, come back and jump on the school bus. It’s just been in my blood ever since and I’ve been doing it for fifty years now. My cousin started doing it with my father, and at first they just collected sap and sold it to various operators around. They finally said “we might as well just get into it, we’re already doing half the work we should just finish it off and make the syrup.” So, they started doing that in 1961 just up the road from here and they worked together every spring.

It fit in perfectly with my father’s other business, which was landscaping, and I also landscape. The springtime is downtime for that so it fits right in and we can keep some money coming in year round. Back then we used to hang 4,000 buckets a year, now it’s mostly tubing and vacuum systems. It’s pretty high tech now. It seems like everybody’s getting into it. The push from the government agencies is that they want every tree tapped in Vermont and New York that they can. That’s pushed a lot of young people into the field and some of them last and some of them aren’t gonna last, but that’s business. I do this because I like being out in the woods. In this case it’s definitely a family tradition more than anything. A new family jumping in can get that, but it’s just going to take some years. I don’t want to say they have any less enthusiasm. I like it because of the tradition, carrying it on and doing that type of work in the woods. But on the other hand, there are people from the city that are getting into it that are spending millions of dollars for investment firms to come in and do it as a business. On paper it looks good but then again, mother nature every once in a while will throw you a curve ball and you have a few bad years in a row and they’re done. It’s always interesting to see how long some of them do last when we do get into a period of bad years. You’re at the mercy of mother nature. She controls when the sap is gonna run and how much you’re gonna get. If you can withstand the lean years as well as the plentiful years, you’ll do alright.

Like I said, in 1961 they started boiling, then we opened the restaurant in 1985 and it’s been going ever since. It’d be nice to pass the tradition on but I got pressured into doing it and I’m alright, but I don’t want anyone to have to take it. If that’s something they feel like doing then I’m more than happy to help them along. It really depends on the individual, if they like it and really enjoy it then they’ll continue. Right now I have a three year old grandson, and who knows, maybe he’ll carry the tradition on.


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