But most maple sap nowadays is collected with tubing. One of the larger sugaring operations in Yankee’s territory is Joe Russo’s sugarbush in Belvidere, Vermont: The Green Mountain Maple Sugar Refining Company. Below is Joe standing under the pipelines that bring sap from more than 70,000 taps into his sugarhouse:

Inside Joe’s sugarhouse is more technology: a vacuum pump for each of the main pipelines above, reverse osmosis systems, a steam boiler, various hi-tech syrup filters. And a diesel generator to run everything. When things are humming, Joe can produce a 55 gallon barrel of syrup every 10 minutes.

Sunday’s Burlington Free Press had a good article about sugaring, both old and new: “Vermont’s sweet season in full swing”. The article contrasts two sugaring operations in Fairfield: one that uses buckets and horses, and one that uses tubing, vacuum and reverse osmosis.

All three states in Yankee’s territory have Maple Open House Weekends this coming weekend, March 28-29. There are plenty of sugarhouses open to the public and I encourage you to go visiting:

BELVIDERE — It sounded like a truck letting off its air brakes Thursday in the boiler room of the Green Mountain Maple Sugar Refining Company. Wrong. It was just owner Joe Russo, testing a pneumatic valve cleaner.

At the back of the complex, a big diesel engine drove a generator and rack of torso-sized, water-cooled vacuum pumps. Their combined volume made conversation impossible. But the steam evaporator was quiet; it won’t fire up for a week or so. Sap runs strong but late in Belvidere. Russo moved quickly and easily through a maze that sometimes resembled a submarine’s engine room, sometimes a dairy. He stepped outside and squinted into the brilliant March sun. Shod in snowshoes, a tapping crew of 15 tramped through maple stands, snooping for leaks in the long vacuum lines.

Russo’s 500-acre sugar bush extends up the side of a steep, 2,900 foot hill. Barely sweet sap from about 50,000 trees feeds into progressively larger hoses and pipes. It drains into outdoor tanks with a total capacity of 110,000 gallons. At full throttle, the system burns through 75 gallons of oil per hour. It will refine 2,200 gallons of sap into a 55-gallon barrel of maple syrup every 20 minutes.

Russo comfortably juggles numbers. He designed the gizmo on the side of his room-sized evaporator that constantly adjusts the boiling temperature of syrup with fluctuations in barometric pressure. He designed the Russo Economizer that caps the evaporator, re-circulates heat and shaves 15 percent off his fuel bills. He oversaw the refurbishment of the cement-truck-sized steam boiler that heated the Springfield Hospital until the early 1990s. And he maintains a fleet of five 1950s-era Maytag wringer washing machines that clean his cloth filters. “You can’t buy one of these systems ready-made. You have to build one,” he said.

Russo started the old fashioned way. As a teenager, he worked a 500-tree sugar bush on his parents’ property in Delaware County, N.Y. — and convinced the local school board to give him 14 weeks off in the spring to complete the job. He developed a keener appreciation for producing syrup in kitchens; he studied culinary physics, chemistry and engineering at Delaware Valley College and the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y.

Those studies honed his appreciation for steam. “Steam will give you 100 percent control,” Russo said. “There’s no danger of scorching; no hot spots and cooler spots. You get a strong, consistent boil without all those deviations you get from a 2,000-degree flame path. And you can keep things a whole lot cleaner.”

Inventive breed

Russo is not alone in his faith in steam, nor in his belief that syrup producers will forever adapt to new challenges, from oil prices to global warming. Tim Wilmot, a University of Vermont Extension maple specialist based at the Proctor Maple Research Center in Underhill Center, ventured to generalize. “Sugar producers are very inventive people,” he said. “They’re always tinkering with things; they take great pride in their production. It comes from sitting around the sugar houses at night, thinking:’What if I tried this … or if I tried that?’” Wilmot likes to tinker, too.

With his colleagues at the center, he designs and tracks research projects in reverse osmosis (the technology that greatly reduces the water content in sap), air-injection systems (which lighten the syrup’s color) and spout size (smaller diameters might help trees heal faster; smaller drill bits extend battery life in portable drills).

Another of Wilmot’s experiments: He embedded sensors in several Proctor maples that read out their vital signs in real-time graphs (available online), showing trunk, air, and soil temperature, as well as sap pressure. Mark Isselhardt, a research technician at the center, said the results of those experiments, as well as most of those undertaken by private operators are “open-source” — or available to the public.

“You probably won’t find another industry where competitors are so willing to share their technologies,” he said. “There are not a whole lot of tight secrets. They might not say exactly how many taps they have, or how much they’re producing, but they’re very willing to offer advice.”

Russo recently gave a workshop on steam systems for the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers’ Association. He said the levels of interest he encountered boosted his belief in his equipment and his product. But not in that order. “I’ve been called a lot of things; an inventor is just one of them,” he said. “We’re part of a wonderful tradition. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be technologically advanced. “Ultimately, we all just have to protect the Vermont brand,” he continued. “We always have to make the best. That’s the point.”

Contact Joel Banner Baird at 660-1843 or joelbaird@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com

After breaking his foot at the beginning of this year, Joseph Russo, owner of the Green Mountain Maple Sugar Refining Company Inc. made the best of his situation and took the time to work on his new restaurant that will be located in Belvidere. During that time, Russo was appointed as a chef instructor at the New England Culinary Institute. The People in this picture gathered together in the Hyde Park home of Virginia Bailey on Wednesday, August 10, to celebrate Russo’s appointment.

St. Albans, The 29th Annual Vermont Maple Festival began at 10 a.m. today when the doors opened at festival headquarters in the American Legion Hall on Klingman Street.

As the Day continues, other events and venues were to open including the St. Albans Historical Museum on Church Street, the craft show and sale at City Hall and the carnival rides at the city parking lot off from Federal Street.

The first day of the three-day event also includes the Youth Talent Show at Bellows Free Academy at 7 p.m.

The Weather was cooperating early today with milld temperatures under overcast skies. The weekend forecast calls for partly sunny skies, with a chance of showers each day. The high temperatures most likely will be the warmest of the year; in the 70’s.

Festival headquarters was bustling Thursday night as judges decided winners in a number of maple contest categories.

Grade A Fancy syrup produced by Harland Titemore of Franklin was named best of its class. The Gillian Family Maple of Fletcher won the award for the best Grade A Medium Amber syrup and Stuart Archambault of Londonderry won the award for the top Grade A Dark Amber syrup.

Mapleview Acres of St. Albans was the winner of the Class I cooking contest for their maple quick bread. Nicold Hardy won the award in the Class II (cake) contest.

The winner in the Class III (maple apple pie) competition was Shelly Tobens of Swanton and Helen Parent of Enosburg Falls won the Class IV (maple syrup doughnuts) contest.

Betty Ann Lockhartof Charlotte was the winner of the Class V (maple sundae sauce) contest and Sarah Chiappinelli of Milton won the youth award for her upside-down cake.

Helen Parent of Enosburg Falls won the special King Arthur flour class for her maple pecan pie.

In the maple products category, Bragg Farm of East Montpelier won the prize for sugar cakes. Goodrich Farm of Cabot won the maple cream competition and Kevin Companion won the award for maple fudge.

Couture’s Maple Shop of Westfield won the award for their hard brick maple.

Steven’s Sugarhouse of Thetford won an award for Indian Sugar and the best maple display award was given to Jean Marie Laroche of Swanton.

The festival continues through the weekend with pancake breakfasts both days beginning at 7 a.m. at city elementary, a large number of demonstrations and performances during each day and into each evening, culminating in the 29th Annual Maple Parade at 1:30 p.m. Sunday. See Saturday morning’s Messenger for festival coverage and the complete weekend schedule.

Chef Joseph Russo, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park New York, checks the consistency of a pecan pie with fellow judge, Deborah Grandshaw at the Maple Festival’s food competition Thursday in St. Albans. Harold Gagnon of Vermont Structural Buildings solders a letter into place on a giant maple leaf he has been constructing this week in St. Albans. The copper leaf will have brass lettering for the Vermont Maple Festival, with numerous small leaves creating a comet-like tail. The design by Richard Cummings of VSB will be part of the company’s float in Sunday’s parade and may be used as a maple promotion campaign by the state (Photographs by John Thornton)

Waterville – The quantity, quality and caliber of maple syrup flowing out of the operation at five-year-old Green Mountain maple Sugar Refining Co. here is garnering widespread recognition and respect.

Not just another sugar maker, owner Joe Russo designed state-of-the-art equipment to process the sap from his 25,000 hillside taps. A custom-engineered steam pan evaporates the clear sap into mostly fancy and medium syrup the he sells.

One day this season found Russo tending the syrup while exuberantly narrating an educational documentary for a film crew, posing for photographs for national gourmet magazine and talking with two journalists.

Such acclaim is due to the care Russo has invested in his crop. George Cook University of Vermont Extension Service maple specialist, said, “This is probably the most modern and up-to-date sugaring operation in the area. The technology and safety features are seven steps ahead of the rest of us.”

“To make quality of a large quantity is difficult,” Russo said. “But, I’ve been able to supersede my expectations because of the speed with which the sap goes through [the process].”

Russo engineered a custom evaporator that measures 10-feet by 8-feet by 2-feet. David Albright, of Jeffersonville constructed the innards of the behemoth. The steam pan has no arch and, hence, is without a direct fire underneath. Instead, the pan is fired by a colossal oil burner that creates steam that threads its way through hundreds of feet of copper tubing – while ingesting 75 gallons of fuel an hour. “Just think, a gourmet food product from the forest without harvesting timber,” said Russo. The sap flows in plastic tubing from the trees downhill into a holding tank, then runs by 16 ultraviolet light bulbs which purify it, killing bacteria. This contributes the quality and grade of his syrup. A reverse-osmosis machine draws water away from the sap and the resulting sugar water is pre-warmed to 140 degrees.

From time to time the sap plunges into the steam pan, boils over 10 seconds of steam-filled copper tubing until it flows out the automatic take-off, ready for pancakes, only 12 seconds have elapsed.

“Joe Russo is taking maple syrup production to new standards in gathering efficiency, filtering and quality, said Jeff Green of Sugar Man of Hardwick.

Russo and his right-hand man, Adam Phelps, attend the fully automated system – but, he hires a crew of 12 men for three weeks to tap his 700-acre mountainside. Russo averages a production of 40 to 77 gallons of syrup an hour as he processes 25,000 gallons of sap per day. His record for speed stands at 99 gallons of syrup in 90 minutes. He averages 10 barrels a day – with 33.75 gallons per barrel.

His powerful system operates at 1,000 amps – when starting it the first morning, a power surge blew out electrical power in Belvedere for seven hours.

Besides the large-scale production, indoor plumbing and ingenuity makes this operation different from the average sugar house. Fixtures and taste-testing utensils are washed in stainless steel sinks. A bathroom, that the usual outhouse accommodates the calls of nature. Shelves are lined with deftly organized clear plastic containers to keep the miscellaneous minutia tidy.

The meticulous environment in which he works is a reflection of a background in food service. A 1980 graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Russo received degrees in culinary arts and baking and pastry arts.

“A clean environment produces a better quality product,” said Russo. To that end, he breaks the mammoth steam pan apart between sap runs to clean it thoroughly with sanitizing 200-degree water, even after a 17-hour day of boiling.

Russo’s love of the maple syrup began when he was a 13-year old student in New York. The state Board of Education granted him 14 weeks off, mid-winter, to run his own sugaring operation. He did this for three years – while being tutored – until the sugar house got struck by lightning.

He carried his harvest of sap out of the woods on a yoke. With his 400 taps, he made syrup he sold to earn money for college and a car.

After sugaring ends Russo leaves the woods of New England, and travels the world aboard a luxury liner as a hotel manager for Holland America Cruise Lines. In charge of 500 employees, he also manages food, hospitality, lodging and entertainment.

He said that his two métiers actually complement each other. One, he says, takes him all over the world and demands that he entertain thousands of people while the other allows him to work with nature in near solitude.

His prediction for this year’s belated season? “The calendar says were late but the trees don’t think so,” said Russo. He said he expects a “wonderful crop.”

Joe Russo was a very happy man last Sunday. As temperatures broke into high 50’s around the state on March 16 and put an end to an unseasonably cold winter, maple syrup producers sprang into action as sap dripped into buckets and flowed down pipelines.

For Russo, who operates in Belvidere the largest sugar bush in the state, according to the Vermont Department of Agriculture, it’s a day that’s been a long time coming.

“It’s a hell of a run and a great day,” Russo said Sunday afternoon as he stood next to a series of large pipelines running from the heights of the mountain behind his sugarhouse to two gathering tanks at its base. “I want to keep up with the flow. I don’t like the sap to sit around too long.”

Sitting is something neither Russo, his two employees, nor the sap get much time to do. With a maple producing process of his own design, Russo aims to make syrup in the most efficient way possible.

His 32,000 taps – plus another 5,000 up in Coventry – are only the beginning of what is one of the most cutting-edge sugaring operations in Vermont. Seven vacuum boosted pipes run for several miles through Russo’s property at the end of Boarding House Road.

Once the sap leaves the pipes, it’s a relatively quick trip to becoming maple syrup.

“We make the best possible product here by using steam,” Russo said. “It’s a system of my own design. You can’t buy what we work with here.”

The process starts with the sap being filtered as it leaves the holding tanks, a fairly common sense practice. Reverse osmosis, a modern sugaring process that uses a high pressure pump to force water out of the maple sap through a membrane, brings Russo’s sap up to a 15 percent concentration of sugar. The concentrated liquid is then pumped into two 2,00-gallon tanks.

This is where Russo’s sugaring system really deviates from the norm.

The sap is run through two pre-heaters that bring the liquid up to a temperature of just above boiling. Then the sap hits the pan to be boiled down to syrup. The pan is lined with copper coils that are super-heated with steam.

“It gets so hot in the pan that it scares us,” Russo said of the boiling temperature of the sap. “When the sap hits the pan it sounds like there’s a tiger in there. It’s just an incredible roar.”

After the sap is boiled into syrup, it gets drawn out of the pan automatically and is pumped into 55-gallon barrels.

The whole process produces seven barrels of maple syrup an hour, and Russo has tweaked his system enough so it takes less than half a gallon of fuel oil (to run the boilers) to produce one gallon of maple syrup.

The conventional method of evaporating sap to make maple syrup by using a wood fire can take several hours to produce just one barrel of syrup.

As Russo himself admitted, “Steam alone will not get you quality. It’s taken many years to perfect.”

To some degree, Russo, who spends eight months each year as a director of hotel services for Holland America cruise lines, has been working on this system his whole life.

As a teenager in upstate New York, Russo’s passion for sugaring led the state board of education to give him time off from school every spring to operate a sugar house on his own. In 1985, he purchased a small sugarplace in Coventry, which one of his employees still operates as a traditional wood fired operation. Then seven years ago he made his way to Belvidere, where he has spend every winter since. He even lives in his sugar house much of the season, cooking pancakes on the little wood stove and sleeping in the recliner his father passed away in.

This year he has nearly tripled the number of taps he works with, which he estimates will bring in around 300 barrels of syrup. Last year Russo tapped a relatively paltry 13,700 trees. Yet even that number is well above the statewide average of between 2,000 and 5,000 taps. The department of agriculture said perhaps two other maple producers in the state work in the same realm as Russo. One of Stowe’s largest producers, Paul Percy, handles around 24,000 taps.

But size isn’t everything for Russo.

“I don’t really think about it,” he said. “An operation like this has to be handled properly or it just doesn’t work. I wouldn’t do this on a large scale if I was uncertain about it.”

The confidence Russo has in his operation means even more work next year and each year to come as he hopes to expand into the rest of his Belvidere property.

One hundred thousand taps is the ultimate goal the maple producer has set for himself, and it’s a goal he believes is well within his reach.

This weekend Russo opens his sugarhouse to the public as part of Vermont’s Maple Open House weekend. He plans to not only share his sugaring operation, but also his homemade donuts and pancakes, an outlet for his love of the culinary arts.

“Of course, if the weather works out and the saps running in like we hope, I won’t be talking much to the people that visit,” Russo said. “That’s jus the nature of the work though, and I think people will be happy with what they see, regardless of whether I get to open my mouth.”

Spring 2004 – Issue 10

Belvidere maple producer taps into new territory
Joe Russo looks ever bit the part of a traditional Vermont maple syrup producer. From the tip of his yellow toque to his durable overalls to his heavy duty winter boots, he typifies the image of a rugged sugarer, willing to take on the elements and, if necessary, defy Mother Nature to put out a crop of quality maple syrup. He also comes off as a bit of an anachronism, dressed as he is, given the backdrop of the cutting edge sugaring operation he has built over the past few years. Standing behind his sugarhouse in Belvidere, his mustache catching flakes of gently falling snow, he reaches up and places a hand on one of seven white three-inch pipes stretching down from the Belvidere mountainside and into the sugarhouse.

“People look at these things and think it’s really something,” Russo says. “They come up here to check things out and get really excited.”

The excitement visitors to Russo’s operation, Green Mountain Maple Sugar Refining Company, feel is certainly understandable. After all, stepping onto part of what the Vermont Department of Agriculture has deemed the largest sugarbush in the state is the agricultural equivalent of “Star Trek” made real.

Tip of the iceberg

“We’re just getting started this season, “ Russo says in mid-March. “The saps trickling in, but we’re not even close to really getting going yet.”

Getting going, as far as Russo is concerned, means the healthy stream of sap currently running through the PVC pipe outside will soon becoming a rushing current of sugary goodness.

His operation has already turned out 15,000 pounds of fancy syrup in the 2004 season, but Russo expects to hit at east the 100,000 pound mark before sugaring is over. He has come a long way over the pas few years in terms of just the sheer increase in the number of taps he and his crew work with, and he isn’t finished yet.

“We’re up to 43,000 taps over 550 acres, “Russo says as he sits in the sugarhouse, warming up nest to an old, wood-burning cook stove. The aged recliner he sits in, the same one his father died in, is the one where he sleeps during a good part of the season.

“Right after this season, we’ve already got the line in to get another 10,000 taps going. Then we’ll get another 10,000 going, and on top of that there’s another 300 acre lot we haven’t event gotten into yet,” he says, the glimmer of an excited child in his eyes.

But the 63,000 taps in Belvidere are only part of the operation. There are another 5,000 taps in Coventry that have been set aside this year in deference to the tremendous amount of work to be done at the primary site.

Russo is hiring an assistant manager to work with his longtime partner, Randy Dezotelle, this year, and that person will then move up to Coventry and manage the smaller sugarbush for the operation.

The numbers themselves are a sight to behold, but they do beg the question of how Russo and company manager to turn out such a large amount of maple syrup in a year’s time.

To find the answer, it requires a trip back in time.

Growing up curious

Born in New Jersey, Russo spent a majority of his childhood in upstate New York, where he developed an early interest in the sugarmaking process.

Determined to understand how sap turns into maple syrup and even more determined to improve the process, he found himself working with the New York State Board of Education to turn sugaring season into an education.

“From the ninth to eleventh grade, the board of education approved time off from school each year so I could manage a sugar place,” Russo recalls.

In that time, he worked with the fundamentals of 1970’s era sap gathering, boiling, and product distribution. From there, he found himself in the Green Mountain State.

Russo purchased the Coventry sugarbush in 1985. Years went by and he then came across a good-sized chunk of land for sale in Belvidere. Eight years later, he has created a sugaring operation considered by some to be the most cutting-edge around.

Getting steamed

To approach the Green Mountain Maple Sugar Refining Company, one wouldn’t expect a sugar house that operates at the edge of the future.

Like many sugarhouses, Russo’s sits at the end of a dirt road that is often muddy and rutted in the spring and difficult to get to. Large and small syrup barrels are stacked at various points around the sugarhouse, waiting to be filled. A snowmobile, and all terrain vehicle equipped with a snowplow, and a couple of pick-ups sit parked outside the green sugarhouse. Old storage tanks sit off to one side, while newer ones are positioned in the back.

The biggest hint that something different, something with potential, awaits inside the set of seven six-inch, vacuum-boosted PVC pipes that zig-zag their way out of the woods before joining together and running into the sugarhouse. Each of the pipes has its own dedicated vacuum pump.

“That’s the setup that makes what we do a lot easier,” Russo says. “Every tap runs into a line, and every single one of those lines runs into one of the seven pipes. It all comes to us down here. There’s no having to go gather sap and haul it down. It does that part of the job on its own.”

There are literally miles and miles of pipe running through this Belvidere sugarbush, and the full length is checked regularly for breaks and other problems.

Once the sap is drawn down to the sugarhouse and out of the pipes, it doesn’t take long before the watery substance is transformed into maple syrup. But unlike many sugaring operations that are driven by wood fire or fuel oil, this one takes an idea from the past and brings into the present.

“We make the best possible product here by using steam, “ Russo says. “It’s a system of my own design. You can’t buy what we work with here.”

The sap is first filtered for impurities, and then it starts the reverse osmosis process. This fairly modern practice uses a high-pressure pump to force water out of the sap through a membrane. This brings the sap up to a 15 percent concentration of sugar.

From there, the sweet liquid is run into two 2,000 gallon concentrate tanks, and from there it goes into pre-heaters to prepare it for the big change it undergoes in the pan. The pre-heating brings the sap u to above-boiling temperatures.

The pan is used for transforming sap to syrup is a far cry from the typical boiling apparatus that allows sugar makers to watch the sap boil while steam billows from the bubbling liquid. Russo’s is a hulking metal machine with numerous pipes running into and out of it. It suggests equally a new agricultural and industrial revolution.

Inside the pan, copper coils super-heat the sap with steam, reaching temperatures that go well beyond scalding.

“It gets so hot in the pan that it scares us,” Russo says regarding the sap as it is boiled. “When the sap hits the pan, it sounds like there’s a tiger in there. It’s just an incredible roar.”

Once the liquid turns into syrup, the sticky stuff gets drawn from the pan via an automatic draw-off system. This system calculates the boiling point of water and determines the time needed for each batch of sap to turn into syrup. Once drawn off, the syrup is pumped automatically into 55-gallon barrels.

The amount of time needed for Russo’s system to transform sap into syrup is incredibly short. In fact, seven barrels, or 385 gallons, of syrup can be produced in an hour. Russo and company have tweaked his system even further, though, and taken a time efficient machine and made it fuel-efficient as well.

Fuel oil is used to run the boilers. All the system requires to produce on gallon of syrup is less that half a gallon of fuel oil.

Behind the scenes at the sugaring operation, Russo has three boilers set up to keep the process going. There is a wood-fueled boiler, a fuel-oil standby boiler, and a massive steam boiler that fills on room of the sugarhouse, leaving only enough room to squeak around it. Russo bought the gigantic boiler, built in 1957, from Springfield Hospital in Massachusetts and had it rebuilt and brought up to current standards.

Another throwback at the sugarhouse is the method Russo employs to clean the filters the sap runs through. An old, white wringer washing machine is still cranked on during each clean-up period, not because it is the cheap or sentimental way to do things, but because it is the method Russo has found to do the best work possible.

“With all the modernization that has gone into sugaring, there is nothing out there that does a decent job at cleaning filters,” Russo said. “The wringer washers do.”

Nothing but the best

That sense of efficiency and purity is something Russo comes back to again and again as he talks about his operation.

He readily admits that “steam along will not get you quality. It’s taken many years to perfect. An operation like this has to be handled properly or it just doesn’t work. I wouldn’t do this on a large scale if I was uncertain about it.”

The level of quality he strives for involves a strong emphasis on sanitation. A large sugarbush alone does not ensure a quality product, and neither doew the method employed for making it.

“Sugarhouse sanitation is still the main focus for us,” Russo said. “When we’re done with a boil, everything is stripped down and cleaned with scalding hot water.”

The cleaning is done every time, regardless of the length of a boil. The operation doesn’t shut down in the middle of a boil, though.

Another part of the efficiency Russo seeks comes in the number of people needed to run a typical boiling period. He said in general, no more than two people need to be in the sugarhouse at any time, curious onlookers aside.

“With steam, you can work toward the best possible product,” Russo said. “It’s also the most effective use of labor, too. The hours are tremendous when the sap is really coming in, but they are really very reasonable for the amount of product we make.”

Looking to the future

Despite the size of the operation as it stands now, the potential for further growth is virtually uninhibited, at least for a few years.

With the number of taps slated to grow by 20,000 or so in the next year, Russo figures there is still another 4,00 or so taps waiting on acreage he hasn’t gotten to yet. In fact, his ultimate goal is 100,000 taps ready and waiting at the start of some future sugaring season.

Taps aren’t the only things Russo has his eyes on. In preparation for the current season, he made the move toward greater self sufficiency by installing an electric power generator “to safeguard against power outages.”

The entire sugarhouse, which has doubled in size over the last year, has been completely rewired to handle the installation of a second reverse osmosis machine. There is now a storage capacity of 100,000 gallons for sap, and he is ready for whatever the season brings.

After the last drip of sap is taken in this year, Russo will then take his operation to another level.

“We’re looking at confection. I’d like to do our own packaging and processing in that area,” Russo said, showing off an unfinished room in the back of the sugarhouse that will house confectionary portion of the business if and when it happens.

An unfinished ceiling in that room reveals a second room upstairs. When asked about it, he simply says, “That will be my apartment.”

In perhaps his greatest sign of dedication to maple syrup production, Russo intends to make the sugarhouse his home during the late-winter and early spring months, and why not. After years of sleeping downstairs in the old recliner and eating plate-sized pancakes cooked on the woodstove, the next logical step would be to simply make the facility his home.

Closing the door on the new rooms, he casts his mind’s eye further down the timeline to an idea he has been kicking around for a while.

Should everything go according to plan, Russo would like to open a pancake house at his belvedere sugarhouse. For the sugarer, cooking is as much second nature to him as making syrup. Before leaving the position last year, Russo was the director of hotel services for Holland America, a luxury cruise line. In his tenure there, he did plenty of cooking for crowds of hungry people, and he would love to translate that to the snowy, muddy woods of Belvidere.

“There’s a lot going on right now, thought,” he says. “Everything got kind of backed up with the way the operation is growing. I’d still love to do the pancake house. It would be wonderful. I’ve got to get through this season first, though, and take care of everything else. Once I get time to eat, I’ll concentrate on the restaurant.”

March 18, 19 and 20 were the days in which people could tour sugarhouses across Vermont and see what sort of sugary goodies can be made from sap. Some sugarhouses were only open on Saturday and Sunday, and some were not open at all.

The Green Mountain Maple Sugar Refining Co., Inc. (GMMSR) was not open to the public, but is a large operation. GMMSR is at the top of Boarding House Hill Road in Belvidere, and is owned by Joe Russo, who has a unique way of sugaring and is concerned with conserving Vermont’s natural resources.

After founding GMMSR on November 12, 1991, Russo has been creating new equipment that has helped sugarmakers and the environment. His newest invention, the Russo Economizer, was tried for the first time on Monday, March 21, and will “decrease the time and energy used in maple syrup production,” said Russo. He also added that his invention will be patented soon.

Russo’s method of turning sap into sugar requires a lot of steps, a lot of time, a unique technique and some help. Russo lives in the sugarhouse during the sugaring season, and is helped by two people, who are there full-time and year-round. Randy Dezotelle is the manager and Michael Lemire is the assistant manager.

During the season, Dezotelle and Lemire are responsible for tapping thousands of trees. This year, they have tapped 47,000 trees, and each year they increase their number by 10,000. According to Dezotelle, they have between three and 12 people helping them on snowshoes, but the number of employees vary, because Russo, Dezotelle and Lemire “can’t figure on help showing.”

The trees are drilled with battery powered drills instead of gas drills and are tapped with a 5/16 inch spout instead of a 7/16 inch spout, which is “better for tree health,” said Dezotelle. Plastic lines are then run from the spouts.

The sap is then pumped from the lines by ten 10-horsepower pumps, which “create a vacuum,” explained Russo. The sap is drawn into seven three-inch lines, delivered to a sap releaser which pumps the sap out of the vacuum into tanks that can collectively hold 80,000 gallons of sap. Just on Sunday, March 20, the tanks had collected 30,000 gallons of sap.
Then much of the sap’s water is removed via reverse osmosis and this “permeate” is brought to the boiling pan, the place where Russo’s unique technique of boiling takes place.

A 250 horsepower high pressure steam boiler is used to evaporate the rest of the water from the permeate. The steam travels through stainless steel pipes which end up in the boiling pan. This method, said Russo, “never burns the pan.”

The final product is released from the draw-off center, which actually calculates when the maple syrup is done. Two valves open, and the syrup is let out. According to Russo, GMMSR can potentially make six 50 gallon drums of syrup per hour, but they usually produce three 50 gallon drums.
To ensure the highest quality product, Russo keeps everything the sap touches clean and all of the inside equipment the sap comes in contact with is stainless steel.
All of GMMSR’s power is provided by a 300 horsepower electrical generator, and Russo uses a wood boiler to heat the building and the hot water. The water and heat are crucial, partly because Russo lives in a back room in the sugarhouse during the sugaring season!
GMMSR’s entire building and sugaring set-up was designed by Russo, who has a food engineering degree from Delaware Valley College in Doylestown, PA. Between his degree and his knowledge of sugaring, Russo has the ability to create new equipment to better the sugaring process.
When Russo is not inventing new things and sugaring between the months of February and April, he is a hotel manager for an ocean liner and lives in Australia. It’s a very different from sugaring; Russo said,”I go from a tuxedo to Carhartt’s.”

Rick Marsh has a different lifestyle from Russo, but he and his wife, Diane, love maple sugaring, too. Rick is a fifth generation sugarmaker, who is continuing the tradition his family has been following for 95 years.

Located on Route 15 in Jeffersonville, the Vermont Maple Outlet has been in business for 16 years. The normal business hours are 9:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m., but on March 19 and 20 the Marshs held special activities between 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m.
According to Diane, she and Rick were open to show visitors the boiling process, give wagon rides into their trees behind the store, showed educational videos about the progressive history of boiling. Of course, maple cotton candy, sugar on snow, maple creemees and maple cream doughnuts were for sale.

Rick said, “this is the first year the sap’s going to flow” during open house, and his prediction was accurate. Last year, the Marshs saw approximately 1,200 people, according to Rick. This year, there were more people “due to the weather,” according to Diane.
The official Vermont Maple Open House weekend was started four years ago by the Vermont Sugarmakers Association, of which Rick is the vice president. He explained that in order to be part of the list in a Ski & Maple Map, sugarmakers pay a fee which depends on several factors.
The size of the producer, the business status of the producer and the number of taps the producer has, among other factors, determines the fee. Rick said he pays $50, but he operates both a retail and wholesale business and has a lot of taps.

The Vermont Maple Outlet promotes a “maple theme,” which coincides with the Marshs’ “support of Vermont companies” and products, said Rick.

To Rick, maple sugaring is a time-honored tradition, but he has incorporated scientific innovations, such as reverse osmosis. Reverse osmosis “cuts boiling time down drastically,” Rick commented. Modern has met tradition.