Here, making maple syrup is a retirement gig

SHELBURNE – Thirty or so tiny plastic cups line the windowsills of the Wake Robin sugar shack, with a name written on each in indelible-ink marker. Those names represent each resident or employee of the retirement community who helps with the maple syrup operation or, more specifically, stops in to guzzle a shot-sized sample of the sweet concoction that’s produced there.

Each resident of the 320-member community who pitches in has a specific job, said Phil Denu, who took part in the boiling process Monday afternoon. And what’s his job?

“Sitting down,” he said from one of the white plastic chairs lining a back wall in the tiny shack.

Denu, a still-practicing dentist originally from New Jersey, elaborated on the value of his contribution. It’s important to have at least three people in the sugar house, Denu said, for the efficiency and safety of an operation that involves a super-hot wood-fired oven and scalding sap. His presence, though, was largely about another warmth-related quality: community.

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“The stories get bigger and better” the longer the sap and conversation flow, according to Denu.

His fellow sugarer, Bob Woodworth, stood outside the shack as steam rose from its rooftop pipe. He compared the sense of community the building creates to another humid ritual of conviviality.

“It’s the New England equivalent of a sauna,” said Woodworth, a resident of Wake Robin for nearly a decade who taught biochemistry for 40 years at the University of Vermont College of Medicine. “The people, the product and the camaraderie – it’s a great way to bring people together in a common effort.”

The sugar house at Wake Robin could have fallen victim to the wrecking ball, though at a couple hundred square feet of pine-board-enclosed space it might only take a well-tossed bowling ball to knock it over. The Shelburne retirement community is expanding, and the third phase of development to be constructed over the next 18 months will envelop the footprint the sugar shack occupied for two decades.

Residents worked with the community’s administration to move the old shack to a safe spot up a hill east of the residences. Not only did they relocate the building, they expanded it; the old one is now a shed filled with nearly four cords of wood feeding the gleaming new stainless-steel evaporator in the adjoining prefab sugar house installed for this season’s harvest.

John Blackmer led Monday afternoon’s boiling session, lording over the sap-filled evaporator while holding a large ladle in his heat-darkened work gloves. The retired science teacher looked to be toiling hard amid the sweet-scented steam, but he didn’t see it that way.

“This is not work,” Blackmer said as residents who had been collecting sap gradually crowded the sugar house at the end of a day’s shift. “Sometimes you have to define fun, but this is fun.”

Sweet harmony

Blackmer and his wife, Judy Blackmer, lived in the early 1960s in Pownal, where John Blackmer sang in a barbershop quartet. Inspired by the maple-intensive state in which they lived, or maybe by the sweet harmonies they were singing, the foursome discussed how they should start a syrup operation.

“Then we had to figure out how to do it,” Blackmer said. More than half a century later, the Blackmers are still boiling sap.

John Blackmer was amazed when the couple moved to Wake Robin and found what he called “a cadre of sugar makers all lined up and organized. It was great.” He got to put his science-teaching background to use, and the syrup-making also (pardon the pun) taps into Judy Blackmer’s previous line of work as a diet consultant at a nursing home.

“There’s a lot of science here,” John Blackmer said.

“And engineering,” Judy Blackmer added.

And as Denu said, everyone has a job. Woodworth installed the steam pipe atop the shack in the third week in February. Dave Partridge, a Proctor native who turns 92 on Saturday, drilled most of the roughly 250 tap holes in the maple trees on Wake Robin’s property and connected much of the plumbing for the evaporator.

“Never did any of it (sugaring) until I got here,” said Partridge, who lived in Stowe before moving to Wake Robin. One of the three sap lines connected to the 310-gallon storage tank feeds directly from the trees, but two connect to collecting bins filled by buckets gathered by Wake Robin residents. Partridge said that more labor-intensive method of collecting sap is intentional, meant to increase the community’s participation in the sugaring process.

A robust crop

Marjorie Major returned to the sugar house from the woods after collecting sap Monday. She said she did some “hobby sugaring” on her beef-cattle farm in Charlotte between 1966 and 2003 and picked up that thread when she moved to Wake Robin a year ago.

“I think most Vermonters are familiar with sugar shacks. It’s wonderful. I love every minute of it,” Major said. “It’s outside in the snow, and it’s heaps of fun.”

This syrup season has been mostly good, according to John Blackmer. “We had a wonderful run, almost more sap than we could handle, and the quality has been good,” he said Monday, the first day of spring. The balmy February gave way to a deep freeze in early March that slowed production, but the recent if roller-coaster-like warming trend has given the sap run a renewed boost.

“Now we’re happy to get dark, robust…” Blackmer said, finishing his thought with an enthusiastic fist pump.

Judy Blackmer said the crew produced 26 gallons by Monday afternoon, approaching last year’s total of 34 gallons. “Six gallons go right to the kitchen” for Wake Robin’s pancake breakfast for residents and staff this Tuesday, according to Judy Blackmer. Some is sold at the community’s gift shop, she said, while the rest goes to the residents who helped make the maple syrup and want to taste the fruits of their labors.

And despite her husband’s insistence that it’s more fun than work, it is still work. Woodworth jokes that newcomers to Wake Robin should be asked upon moving in, “You think you came here to retire?”

Most involved in the sugaring operation have plenty of other activities to keep them busy. Partridge helps clear trails on the Wake Robin property. Judy Blackmer makes jewelry and weaves. John Blackmer, among other exploits, sings in a chorus, is about to become president of the residents’ association and harvests honey.

“If it’s sweet,” Partridge said of Blackmer’s syrup-and-honey predilections, “he’s got the personality for it.”

“All labors of love,” Blackmer said.

If you go

Wake Robin isn’t taking part in Maple Open House Weekend, but dozens of other sugar makers throughout Vermont will welcome visitors to celebrate the statewide tradition during the two-day event Saturday and Sunday. For more information visit www.vermontmaple.org/openhouse.

Other upcoming maple events include:

• April 28-30, the Vermont Maple Festival, St. Albans; www.vtmaplefestival.org
• April 29, the St. Johnsbury World Maple Festival; www.worldmaplefestival.org

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at 660-1844 or bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com. Follow Brent on Twitter at www.twitter.com/BrentHallenbeck .