A Visit to Palmer's Sugarhouse

4/5/09: A little ways off of Shelburne road, past the outer reaches of Spear street, and in the midst of a fair amount of farmland, there's a grey wooden shack with a plume of steam trailing out the chimney: Palmer's Sugarhouse is boiling. As soon as you open the door, the first thing that hits you is the sticky-sweet scent of maple. Sitting on the counter near the cash register are jugs of maple syrup so fresh, they're still warm from the boiler. However, the main attraction of a sugarhouse is the enormous gleaming boiler with its vats of bubbling sap, continually sending water vapor up and out of the looming vent. It's beside this machine that I found Dave Palmer, owner and resident sugaring expert of Palmer's, which has been a family-run business since 1867. He's been in the business of sugaring his whole life (“That's a picture of me on the wagon with the horses in 1952. Of course, I look a little bit different now, ”) and I asked him if climate change had had any effect on sugaring.

“You're not the first one to ask me that question. [...] In a weather related thing like sugaring, there's nothing normal, ever.” Palmer didn't seem to be too concerned about it: “Lots of people say weather's affecting sugaring, but I just don't see it. The year we made the most syrup, it was on bare ground. It's been a good year- we started late, and quitting before we wanted to quit. [...] Not a super year for me, but we had a normal year.” He hasn't seen much in the way of recent trends, either. “I think the last thirty years, we've started boiling in February.” As for long-term trends, Palmer's a little more skeptical. “They keep talking about the weather changing, but I got news for everybody: this used to be a glacier!” Still, business has been good. He's amazed at how how much syrup he's sold this year, even though times are tough. As Palmer put it, “there's more people at Walmart than there used to be.” “Everybody I know put on new taps- it's supply and demand, though the prices are set by the processors. [...] As the price of what you make goes up, the price of what you need goes up. Normally, the farmer loses.”

Although making maple syrup is very time consuming, and (possibly) vulnerable to climate change, the end result of all that boiling is sweet sweet satisfaction. As Palmer put it, “I'm addicted to sugar. I put maple in everything: maple pancakes, maple ice cream, maple coffee, maple milkshakes...” As I left the sugarhouse with a half pint jug in my pocket, I got the suspicion that I'll soon be nursing a sweet tooth of my own.