Streaksap Across the Property in the 1960s

As mentioned in previous posts, Charla and I are curious people. We will often be riding in the car and start a sentence "I wonder why....". We have a “wonder why” list we keep on our smartphones, so we remember to follow up with research in the future. The response is often "Huh, I didn't know that."

I have a couple of updates in this post regarding the Vermont Cabane plan and a curious curiosity item. First the updates. We have sold 16 old silver coins, made another "paycheck" donation, and found some items around the house to sell. This has put us at $3250 out $43,000 in the Sugarhouse savings account. I continue to look for things to sell. I looked at the dog, and after I paused a bit too long, she got out of her bed and left the room. I’m not sure what she was thinking. On Instagram, I contacted a maple syrup producer in Ontario, Canada. I liked their sugarhouse and asked about the number of trees / taps they had and what size arch /evaporator they employed. He stated he had 300 taps and was using an arch the same size as our prospective one. He then stated that his 300 taps max out his evaporator. Given we are planning on 1000 taps, I reached out to Leader Evaporator for another opinion on arch / evaporator size. It looks like the initial recommendation I received from another manufacturer might have been off a little. The arch / evaporator has a large impact on the size sugarhouse we need.

One evening a couple weeks ago, I was thinking about my earliest memory of my grandfather, father, and uncles making maple syrup in the old sugarhouse. I remember the sugarhouse being full of people with lots of laughing, conversation, and food. I calculate this memory to be when I was about four years old.

Fortin Family

Fast forward to my next memory, regarding the sugarbush, to when I seven or eight. During that gap, all the mature maple trees in the sugarbush had been cut down and there were large piles of dirt and branches in multiple places throughout what used to be the sugarbush. Large stumps, missing the towering upper growth, were everywhere. The sugarhouse was silent, and empty. The laughter and conversation around sugaring time were gone. I regularly explored the sugarhouse and what remained within until it was time for me to venture out on my own as I headed to college.

This past fall, I spent some time in the sugarbush taking pictures and looking at the building site as well as where we might put up our mainlines as part of bringing sugaring back to this property. I enjoy having the pictures. At the end of my workday, I will often bring them up on the computer and zoom into different sections of the sugarbush with reflections of the past and excitement for the future.

The memories of time that has passed and looking at the pictures of the young maple trees in the sugarbush now, I found myself wanting to better understand what caused the need to cut down the large mature maple trees in their prime that once stood on the property.

Google and I worked together very late one evening until I came across an article from the United States Department of Agriculture, Research Paper NE-687 by Davis R. Houston. This article stated that Sapstreak is a fungus (technical name – Ceratocystis Virescens) and was first seen in Vermont in 1964 and attacks only the sugar maple (technical name – Acer Saccharum). It does this by entering through a wound of some sort. They mentioned logging, or gathering sap, or any other type of activity that causes a wound. And the process of simply tapping a maple tree by drilling a hole, and putting a spout is enough to start the fungal invading process. The article goes on to state that is doesn’t take long (a couple of years) and the wood or core of the tree becomes stained and soft making it unusable for lumber and maple sugaring.

As I got older, my father and I cut down the trees the loggers didn’t take. These were trees on the outside of the sugarbush that had barbed wire cattle fence built on them which sawmills would not have wanted. I remember that most of the trees did have a soft core to them and were very dark. I can’t say for a fact they had the fungus, but what I remember could support that theory.

I reached out to the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources and communicated with Emily where I explained what I was looking for and what I had found. She got back to me within

24 hours and stated that the Agency’s records only went back to 1967, however, it was the only item of concern at that time. She was confident this was the culprit.

I remember a conversation, when I was older (14 – 15 or so) between my father, grandfather, and a neighbor who had a 10,000 tap sugarbush close to ours about the dilemma and decisions my grandfather had made. I didn’t understand it at the time, but looking back now, as the pieces start falling together, my grandfather had a dilemma. He could take a chance that the fungus wouldn’t take hold. However, if it did take hold, not only would he no longer be able to make maple syrup again on this property, but the high valued lumber the trees could provide would be lost.

In the end, he decided to sell the trees for lumber and the sugarbush was cut down. In my research, I found the two arial photos.

One from the early 1960s, which shows the sugarbush intact, and the one in color from the early 1970s showing it had been cut. The yellow circle is the sugarbush and the black circle is the sugarhouse. I can date these by the fact interstate I-91 that runs close to the property shows one lane being built in the early '60s, and the building of a second lane in the early '70s. Looking at the picture from the early '70s, I have a sense of sadness and can feel the profound sorrow the family must have felt at the time.