CHELSEA, Vt. (WCAX) – Sugarhouses are nearing the last few weeks of a warm and unpredictable sugaring season. In Chelsea, one long-time sugar maker had a record winter.
“I just have always had a fever for sugar,” Calvin Johnson said with a smile.
It kicked in when Johnson was seven, tagging along with family to collect sap. Fast forward over three decades and Johnson runs his own syrup business, Johnson Family Sugarhouse.
In a typical winter, Johnson averages 4,800 gallons of syrup. This season, he’s expecting up to 6,000.
“It’s gonna turn out to be one of the better sugar years that we’ve ever had,” Johnson said.
He chalks the season’s success up to last summer’s flooding, saturating trees and creating more sap. Plus, an abnormally warm winter with cold nights sprinkled throughout got sap moving through the trees better – and earlier – than usual.
Johnson anticipates another 10 to 12 days of sugaring ahead. “You just kind of run on adrenaline a lot of the time, you know?” Johnson laughed. “I’m up all hours of the night and day around here.”
This season, a warm winter is something to celebrate. But if winters keep warming up, there won’t be enough freezing nights to create optimal sugaring conditions, putting sugar makers in a sticky situation.
“If you get to a certain point and you’re not making enough to kind of be worth it, then you’ll decide that well maybe this isn’t for me,” Johnson explained. “You know, I think that day is down the road quite a ways but it certainly could happen.”
Johnson’s son Ronald, who plans to eventually take over the sugarhouse, doesn’t want to face that reality. “I’ve just kind of gotten that itch for sugaring and it’s not really going away anytime soon,” Ronald Johnson said. “So I’m planning to stick with it for quite a while.”
He says he’s ready to do what it takes to keep the business running.
“One way or another, you just gotta find a way to adapt to everything that’s changing and just do your best,” Ronald Johnson shrugged. “That’s kind of my plan and my outlook when I think about that.”
His father shares the sentiment. “It’s one of those things you always think about but you don’t ever dwell on it too, too much. You’re just, you know, you kind of take it year to year,” Johnson said.
This year, that means celebrating their harvest while considering new technology to keep up with next year’s flow and changing conditions. The Johnson’s say they’re hoping for warm days, freezing nights and a layer of wet snow on the ground to close out sugaring season.