Often the most difficult part of a project is getting started. Up to this point, Charla and I have done a lot of discussing, planning, selling coins, re-planning our effort of bringing to life the Vermont Cabane De Sucre. In June of this year (2023), we traveled to our woods in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom (NEK) to begin the process of implementing our plans to bring the making-maple-syrup process back to life as part of our anticipated retirement (August 2023). Having grown up in Howard Frank Mosher’s Kingdom County, and the many trips back to my hometown, I’m in awe of the raw beauty the area still holds. I confess to having internal conflict where I much appreciate nature and yet, I will look to transform our little section of the Kingdom woods into a series of pipes and tubes throughout so that the sap from the maple trees will flow to the sugarhouse (yet to be built). It is my hope that working with what nature provides, the land will be preserved for many generations to come.
Our ten-hour drive was filled with much discussion about what Charla and I needed to accomplish while we were at the homestead for a three-week period. I felt exhilarated and filled with great anticipation to finally be starting the project. For some of you who are new to our journey, our land in Vermont’s NEK (Northeast Kingdom) once had an operating sugarhouse (a building where maple sap from sugar maple trees is boiled down into maple syrup). The old sugarhouse was built by my grandfather and my grandmother’s brother likely in the 1940s. In addition, I am sure that many of my uncles at the time played a key role in the building of the sugarhouse. At that time, the sap from the mature maple trees was gathered with horses and a sleigh. In the 1960s, a fungus called Sapstreak infected the trees and the mature maple trees (200 years + old were harvested for the lumber). Over the last 50 years, my father, Robert “Jean” Fortin worked the sugarbush (a woods that has a predominant amount of sugar maple trees) shaping, culling, nurturing the maple sapling offspring of the original trees to the point where the sugarbush has 1300-1500 sugar maples ready to begin their generational task of producing the sweet sap that is the basis of pure Vermont Maple Syrup. Unfortunately, my father passed away about a year and a half ago, but his work and what he taught me about the sugaring process will continue one. Charla and I will do our part in this generational process.
We arrived in the evening of Saturday June 10th, and reviewed our plans for the stay to cut 10 cords of firewood (to dry for the 2025 sugaring season). Cut and clear about 12 trees for the sugarhouse building site. Have an excavator level the site and level it with gravel and crushed rock. Cut 90 – 10-foot posts to be used as part of the support structure of the sugarhouse. And then cut 6 – 20-foot trees to be used as major cross beams as part of the sugarhouse support structure. In addition, we hoped to take delivery of the majority of the lumber needed to build the sugarhouse starting next spring (2024). The lumber was ordered from a local sawmill. The lumber is green (freshly cut) and needs to dry before using it as building material.
We got the ATV filled with gas and the battery hooked up and headed to the woods around 12:00 on Sunday the 11th as we began with cutting the trees that needed to be removed on the building site before the excavator could do his job on the building site.
Charla and I were both apprehensive about our ability to clear the trees. It felt good to start the chainsaw and look up at the first tree to be taken down. The top of the tree was leaning to the north which was the general direction of where I needed it to go. Unfortunately, it went northeast and fell leaning up against another tree. This would make the effort of blocking (cutting off the limbs off and tree up into smaller manageable pieces) much harder. It wouldn’t take long and the chain on the chainsaw came off forcing us to take a break before we had started. We took a lot of video footage of the work we were doing. A full length version of Episode 1 -- Creating The Building Site can we watched here (a series of videos were edited to 25 minutes). For those wanting to see a shorter video of what we did, here is the link. It is 8 minutes.
Once the chainsaw was fixed and the first tree was felled, blocked up, and stacked, Charla and I looked at each other and realized the amount of effort our “older” bodies had in front of us. I felt like I had done a day’s work, however only about an hour had gone by. The pile of
wood from the tree was emasculatingly small. I had come down with a cold a couple weeks prior and it had settled in my chest and developed into bronchitis. Between the constant coughing, and my body not reacting the way my mind wanted it to, I was feeling a little defeated. I’m always telling our kids that nothing is ever easy, but there is always a way forward.
Charla and I gave ourselves a pep talk and agreed that we would do a little at a time. The first day ended with three trees cut. A reminder to bring all the tools potentially needed to fix whatever might break while working in the woods and the need for mega size bag of cough drops.
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