♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Stanley Lewis Holmes, Jr.: My name is Stanley Lewis Holmes, Jr.

I'm named after my dad.

Grew up as a kid here on the farm so sugar moves always going on as a kid.

You helped out as much as you could when you were younger.

♪♪♪ Stanley, Jr.: I always start tapping the pipeline beginning of February.

My brother-in-law and his brother, they've been helping me here for the last 5, 6 years now.

Stanley, Jr.: Alaska is Tony's dog, Tony and Kelly.

So she comes up every day.

And if she doesn't come up, she's not very happy.

She's a good dog.

Good dog, aren't you?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Erin Holmes: My name is Erin Holmes.

I'm here in the Holmes purse farm sugarhouse.

I am one of five kids.

I'm the youngest of the five; Kelly being the oldest, with Will, Junior, and Bobby my three brothers.

And we are children of Stanley Holmes and Joanne Holmes.

My grandfather was 6 months old when my great-grandfather, his father, bought the farm.

The previous owner was already producing maple syrup, so they just continued on.

I was very close to my grandfather, my father's father, William Bernard Holmes, and he was so involved in the sugarhouse and maple syrup production.

When I would have been 4 or 5 and 6, he would have been about 80 years old and it was amazing what he still could do and still did do at 80 years old.

Mom learned from him, and I learned from him and learned from mom, and that's how our knowledge is passed down.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Erin: The horses over the tractor was well before my time.

I only ever remember the tractor.

Tony Schoolcraft: They're coming around that tree that way.

Stanley, Jr.: I think it goes around both of them-- Erin: Chores have to be done 365 days a year twice a day, right?

And so Will's more the barn man, and Junior has always been the guy to do more of the things in the woods and the other jobs on the farm.

So that made sense; Will being the main man in the barn, that Junior ended up taking over the sugaring part in the sugarhouse.

Stanley, Jr.: Brady, we need enough pipe-- Tony: Yeah, tie it to the dog.

Stanley, Jr.: She can lag pipe, any piece like a tap, a drop line, a tee, a joiner.

You know, you put it in the back of her collar and call her and she'll bring it over to you.

Tony: Thank you.

Good girl.

Tony: Do we put another one here or there?

Right here.

Stanley, Jr.: I lost track, but I figured we got to have a good 10,000 on pipeline and then we hang in another couple of thousand buckets.

Tony: Do rock paper scissors, see who has to climb over the fence to get those lines way down?

Stanley, Jr.: Yeah, you find a few new ones every year that's big enough to tap.

And if you find a couple that got enough to make a line, you add another line.

Or you'll lose some.

A branch will come down on an old tree or something and you--so you lose maybe half the tree.

A tree that maybe had four tufts, now you only have two on the good side.

Stanley, Jr.: It takes me about a month to do the pipeline, and I'd like to have it ready for the end of February.

That way if you get an early run, the pipeline is there.

Stanley, Jr.: Once you hook your pipeline up you never lose a drop, where the bucket--sometimes it might freeze at night so you get a chunk of ice in your bucket.

And then you get a good run, the ice comes up, the next you know your sap is running over the bucket.

Once a day, someone's going to spill a bucket of sap on them.

Slip, fall, trip.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Stanley, Jr.: The sap from up on top of the hill comes down to the little pump house, which is just across the road here, and then ends up into the holding tank here.

You will check on the weather before you start tapping your buckets because if you tap too early your hole will dry out because the pipeline, everything is sealed; where your bucket, your spell is still open to the wind.

Stanley, Jr.: This year I found tapping quite a bit harder than the year before.

Seemed like there's more snow.

At the end of the day you feel it in your legs and you don't feel like doing much, just sitting down resting for the next day.

♪♪♪ Erin: Back in the day it was like it was all buckets, and we did all of it collecting the sap.

So, you know, you take your buckets and that--we would have--we all would have done that, my siblings and myself.

Stanley, Jr.: Well, I was probably about 4 or 5 when I first started driving the tractor.

Maybe I was 6.

I was driving one tractor, my brother was driving the other tractor, transporting the loads from the woods--up in the woods here in the main woods down here to dump.

So we knew all the roads in the woods.

So we could sit there and take a shortcut here and there and the guys didn't have to wait long in between loads.

Erin: Yes, mom was always so proud because one year dad lost his help in the sugarhouse and he said, "I don't know who I'm going to get to help daddy in the sugarhouse."

Daddy being my grandfather, his father.

And mom said, "Well, I could help daddy."

And my father said, "Oh, no.

You will have those pans burned before you know it and then we'll be in a terrible fix."

But mom didn't take no for an answer.

She started learning from grandpa, and mom was like the daughter he never had.

He had four sons, and they were very close.

Before you knew it mom was running the sugarhouse, and she became very invaluable and worked so hard.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Stanley, Jr.: Well, you tap some trees a little bit far, maybe not worth putting on pipeline.

Not enough taps to do it.

So you still hang a few buckets here and there, and you can always tell how your trees are running by gathering your buckets.

If your buckets are full, that means your pipeline is going to be full, too.

Stanley, Jr.: A lot of people come, say they only have one or two taps per tree.

So their trees aren't as big as ours.

Stanley, Jr.: One year I was checking the sap from all the places.

The big old trees on the road side here was almost double the sugar content than the other trees.

It's the age, and obviously they get more sunlight probably here too.

Erin: Grampy used to always say that our soil probably--we had really good soil here on the farm compared to maybe other places and that might be a factor that gives our syrup maybe a little extra flavor, you know.

There are other things like--obviously the weather has to cooperate.

Stanley, Jr.: It takes a storm to get everything going.

Then it's got to be plus three, four during the day, minus three, four at night.

We always figure sugaring's about 6 weeks.

If the temperature is too cold, you miss a week.

You can't get that week back.

Once it warms up and gets too warm, the season's over.

So you got to make sure during that window span you make as much as you can.

They say you can make 80% your crop in a good week, if the temperature is just right.

Erin: Well, some of the main things actually are making sure you boil it while it's fresh.

So, you know, we try very hard.

We make sure we get every day's sap run, if you will, boiled and put through that day.

Quick boiling and really good filtering.

You know, there's a few things in this house--in this sugarhouse that are like icons that are from the beginning of time that--this is one of them, the little thing that we, you know, taste the syrup out of.

Stanley, Jr.: I like the syrup.

I like to taste the syrup.

That's--I taste every batch that comes off.

Erin: You got to make sure it tastes good, but there's other means to see the grade.

Now, the middle one would be the empty one that we would put our syrup in, and you would look in the sunlight and you would be able to see if your syrup was, you know, a B or an A or an A+.

Well, one year dad got a new tester.

He gave me the old one and I'm like, "Wow."

Like, "Thanks, dad."

Well, dad came back in the house, and I said, "You know that syrup thing you gave me?

I tasted one and it tasted awful."

And he said, "Syrup?

That's oil."

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Erin: The thing about the farm and the thing about sugaring is there's always a job for everyone.

As soon as you get home from school, you'd have a snack maybe and get down to the sugarhouse.

Stanley, Jr.: When I was younger, I spent a lot of time in the sugarhouse with my grandfather to help him fire.

It was a wood fire.

The fire never went out.

You had to boil, boil, boil all night just so you'd have room the next day for your sap.

Erin: I was 12 when I started running the pans in the sugarhouse on my own, and I'd run it for like maybe--you know, start by half an hour.

The next thing you know I was running it for hours and stoking the wood into the big fireplace, and taking off the syrup, and making sure the pans didn't get burned.

When we filtered our syrup, it was cloth liners and felt--filters, and a big job was, you know, removing every filter, changing it for a fresh filter, and lugging the buckets up to the milk cows to wash them out.

There were so many different jobs.

Canning--you weren't pulling off syrup quick like you are nowadays with the machine, the reverse osmosis.

You know, I could boil and then I might can a bunch in between, keeping an eye on the dial, making sure nothing was--our levels were good.

Comes off quite a bit quicker now; and you do, you need extra help with canning now.

My brother's daughter Samantha, she's very involved.

Stanley, Jr.: Samantha does all our canning for us.

She's very good at that.

Erin: I canned for years, and the canning machine was manual.

So it was ten cranks one way for one wheel and another ten for the other one.

You take your can out, turn it upside down.

Next.

I'm really picky and I hated getting sticky, and we're talking maple syrup here.

So I really kept a very, very clean station because I had hot water going and rags and wiping things all the time.

There did come a point where I had to give into it and become one with a sticky.

People loved to come visit and, you know, see the syrup production and taste the syrup.

Last year was maybe not the same as previous years with COVID, but hopefully things will get back to normal.

And it's definitely a place, especially on a beautiful warm day when the sun is out and the sap is coming in.

Stanley, Jr.: The nighter is what you separate out as a syrup when it comes off.

It passes through your filter press, stays in your filter press.

Your clean syrup goes out one way.

And after a while your press, you have to clean it.

And my daughter feeds her animals with it.

Samantha Holmes: --doesn't like to share.

Stanley, Jr.: Well, I figure if you want to make your best stuff, it's always the beginning of the year.

As the season goes on, your syrup gets darker.

That's just a proven fact.

I have a grader.

I'll grade it, see what color it is, see if it's dark.

If it's maybe too dark your first run, I'll put it into a barrel.

Soon as the flavor I figure is good, I'll start to can it.

Stanley, Jr.: Oh, we can usually on a good year around say 500 gallons probably.

Yeah.

Maybe six, something like that.

Erin: Dad's very hands-on on the sales.

Customers come to the door, and they have for years.

Dad still does a lot of shipping, and he does a lot of it himself.

I mean, I just started helping a little bit; but dad, he packages a lot of boxes and he sends it to a lot of different places, US and Canada especially.

And so basically a certain amount is put in cans and the rest is put in drums.

Stanley, Jr.: They'll go to the boss where there's a intrapol and there's a guy that--he's a packer, who will sit there and put them in cans, sugarmake, whatever.

You just can't sell to a independent buyer or whatever.

It has to go through the federation and they'll pay you.

They don't pay like they used to.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Stanley, Jr.: And once sugaring is done, well, you got to pick everything up.

Pick all your buckets up.

Hopefully you can pick them up in a couple of days, that way the wind doesn't blow them around into the ruts of the roads where the mud and the water is and get them all dirty.

It makes a little bit harder washing them next year.

Erin: Preparation is the big buildup and you're getting ready for the big year and then you're in production, and that's like a lot of hard work.

But then it's the cleanup.

It's kind of like the letdown, you know.

Everyone's tired.

It's a little less fun 'cause you're at the end of it, but it's a very important part for it to be ready for the next year of course.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Erin: That's pretty much the cleanup.

It's collecting all the buckets back in the day.

Now, with pipeline, it's a bit different.

They have to flush their pipeline out, and there's maintenance with the pipeline of course.

Stanley, Jr.: We couldn't get alcohol.

We use--normally wash with alcohol.

Because of COVID last year, they didn't have any.

It was all saved for the hospitals.

And so we just rinsed it with water.

Stanley, Jr.: I like to put it up, but it's hard to clean up.

Usually, a lot of times you're by yourself.

That's the hardest part.

You lose all your men, but it's something that has to be done.

You just pick away at it day by day.

I don't work in the rain anymore.

So if it's raining, well, you take a break and go hard the next day.

Erin: I'm at work during the day so I don't get here as much as I'd like to; although I usually find time to come back, you know, spend a day or two at some point in the sugarhouse.

It's the everything, right?

You got the warmth.

You've got the steam.

You've got the smell.

You've got the taste.

It's hard work that gives a lot of satisfaction and the product's great, you know, something to be proud of.

Stanley, Jr.: This year there was a lot of wind and it didn't run that good.

This is all Mother Nature.

It's nothing you can do.

I was ready on time, and it's just--the weather just didn't work with me.

That's all.

And it wasn't as good as last year so you're a little bit disappointed, but you're in it for the long haul so you just say, "Hey, maybe next year will be better," right?

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