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Maple Season in New England

Timeless ways to prepare the taste of spring

by Jim Collins

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Credit: Elise Tillinghast

Tig Tillinghast tends a maple forest that has been nurtured for generations.

Credit: Tig Tillinghast

A sure sign of spring: "sugaring off" in Vermont. Maple sap is boiled down in stages in an "evaporator" -- a series of rectangular metal pans over a wood or oil fire -- producing prodigious quantities of steam along the way. It takes 40 gallons of sap to produce one gallon of syrup, which is around 67% sugar.

Recipes: Cooking with Maple Syrup
Video: Making Maple Syrup

High pressure had drifted over central Vermont, and with it temperatures had climbed steadily from the teens overnight up past freezing and into the 40s. David "Tig" Tillinghast, had driven out that mid-April morning and checked the sugar bush in Strafford--212 acres of leased land, 1,050 taps--and found the sap running like crazy. The season was winding down, but there would be at least one more good run.

It's a 45-minute round trip to what Tig calls "the Baker bush" from his own trees and sugarhouse in Thetford Center, Vermont.

I join him in his pickup for the second ride of the day, with a 425-gallon collecting tank in the bed behind us. We drop down off Hubbard Hill, passing the brick farmhouse where the late Noel Perrin lived, where Tig boiled sap for the first time as a student of Perrin's at Dartmouth in the early 1990s. "It was actually a writing class," Tig says. "Ned introduced us to sugar making so we could get away from campus and meet some real people and get our hands dirty, and have something to write about."

He turns the pickup north on Route 113, then west on Sawnee Bean Road, pointing out open pasture protected by conservation easements, mentioning family histories. New to Vermont, he talks about making sugar and fitting in. "I'm from this kind of town in a different place," he says, referring to Danielson, the mill town in northeastern Connecticut where he grew up. "I just happen to be a swamp Yankee with an education."

Tig sees sugaring as a tool for protecting land, a way to get involved in the local culture, and a way to live amidst an extraordinarily productive maple forest that has been nurtured and tended for generations for this one purpose. With virtually no background, Tig moved here in 2006 and soaked up everything he could find on the science of syrup making, consulted with experts throughout the Northeast, and, especially, talked with the sugar makers around Thetford. He was sensitive to the culture he was entering, and--crucially--he liked and respected it. He got to know his neighbors. He volunteered on the town's budget committee and agreed to serve as selectman. His wife, Elise, joined the local library board.

And Tig asked questions. He found that all the small stores in the area had longstanding relationships with local sugar makers, and he didn't try to steal their business. He went to Shaw's over in Randolph--the largest supermarket in Orange County--and the manager said, "Nobody's ever asked us before." Tig sold 50 liters of syrup to him on the spot and started a relationship. He sold none of his syrup locally, unless someone nearby was running low on a certain grade and Tig could help him out. He traded his C-grade batches to the Bascoms' big commercial operation in New Hampshire, in return for smaller amounts of their grade A dark amber.

He discovered the microeconomies and markets that affected the price of maple syrup and felt comfortable moving among them. He bottled most of his syrup in old-fashioned, square, flask-topped liter bottles, put gourmet-style labels on them (2009: The High Flavor Reserve), and marketed his product to high-end cafes and restaurants, most of them west of New England. He advertised Tillinghast Maple Syrup as a corporate gift, complete with customized labeling.