When It's "Sugaring" Time Back Home!
- Dr. Dave Cutts, DDS
- May 1
- 5 min read
Memories of Cutts Maple Farms
PLUS What It Means to Be a VIP Gold Patient
There are two times a year that I feel the call of back home the strongest. And they are exactly six months apart.
Sugaring and the fall colors.
“Sugaring”, that’s when the days are warm and the nights are cold back home in Vermont. And the maple trees are waking-up and getting ready for spring where green buds will pop-out into leaves that eventually end-up bright red, orange, and yellow in the legendary, sacred fall. Many of you know I go every fall, and if you didn’t, here’s a couple of links to the now legendary “Bear-video!”
But back to sugaring. Like many farmers, my Uncle Royal ran quite a successful maple syrup operation back in the day. I guess that was around 1950 or so.
Cutts Maple Farms it was, and it was a tradition to have a hundred or so pints of Fancy Grade shipped out each year for you, my VIPs - that’s Very Important Patients!
(Note: Maple syrup is graded from the lightest-colored, sweetest grade to Grade A, B, C and D. The C and D were mostly cooking only, with the Fancy and Grade A reserved for the farmer and his family and friends. Grade B was shipped out of state as I recall!)
The process is fascinating and yet simple.
Drill a small hole into the tree, drive a metal spout into it, hang a 3 gallon bucket on the hook under the spout (a tap), let it collect the drip-drip for the day, dump said bucket into an 800 gallon aluminum sap tank on a sled, let gravity feed the barely-sweet sap into a large iron pan 12 feet by 12 feet with slats in it, which had a large furnace under it (sort of like a steam train).
Then farmer, or son, or nephews (that’s me!) throw wood into the furnace day and night for about ten days until 3000 gallons of Vermont Maple Syrup are made. (Note that it takes about 50 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. I guess that means we collected 150,000 gallons of sap!)
I never saw the next step which was canning all of it into 1 gallon, 1/2 gallon, 1 quart, and pint cans which were shipped all over the country, because I was already back in school after spring break.
But sugaring, as only Vermont farm boys know, is a year-round job. That’s where I come back in. During my high school and college years, I made many trips up from the Boston area to visit the farm, and I brought quite a few strapping friends with me. Guys from the football and basketball teams.
It seemed that every time we showed up, Uncle Royal just “happened” to be firing up the Ford tractor to “go out for wood”. Of course, it only seemed right that we pitch-in and help him bring in a few loads! It took me a few years actually to figure out this was more than just a “coincidence”!
But fair is fair. My friends were always fed well from the mammoth garden that he was an outright professional at.
Corn, green beans, carrots, parsnips, tomatoes, lettuce, squash, asparagus, green peas, green peppers, scallions, potatoes, yams, turnips, beets, all went alongside the main dish of fresh rainbow trout from his stocked pond! Not to mention beef from his own stock!
Dessert was usually strawberry shortcake, but there were also giant blueberries and raspberries!
And on special occasions there was homemade, cranked-by-hand ice cream! With fresh berries! Wow, farm cuisine could be pretty epic!
BTW, the cream was from one Jersey that he kept just for that purpose! (and for homemade butter)
On the times we stayed over, we would be served my Aunt Caroline’s waffles - where she did some ninja-waffle-maker-thing where she beat the egg whites separately and then folded them carefully back into the batter to make the lightest, most delectable waffles I have ever tasted. Of course they were covered in Fancy-grade maple syrup! With fresh berries!
Which brings me back to Sugaring…
One of my very earliest memories - I was exactly 3 and a half - was the vivid image of two very large, powerful, chestnut draft horses huffing, puffing, straining, with muscles rippling and nostrils blowing steam into the cold, early spring day as they dragged a sap tank sled they had just unloaded at the sugar house up the steep ravine that led up to the big red barn. They huffed and puffed. And then they turned back up into the “sugarbush” to gather more sap, tree by tree, bucket by bucket (sugarbush is the local name for “large hillsides of maple trees”).
The steep dirt road was muddy with patches of snow and streams of water pouring down it. They struggled mightily just to gain their footing, and as they did, they slowly made their way up amidst the shouts of the driver. I still can see the clouds of smoke and steam behind them, rising up in billows from the sugarhouse against the backdrop of the hillside of the bare maples that would soon be green. And this was all over a carpet of snow that was turning into streams of water that gathered into the rushing, very noisy brook beside me.
It was an image made to last a lifetime.
That was early March 1958.
Just over two years later, I found myself in Napa, California. The farm, the horses, the cows, the house, the maples, the sugarhouse all left behind. But that’s a story for another time.
Though I get back nearly every year, I miss sugaring time as you can imagine. The next best thing I can do is bring it, as much as possible, out here to me. Which, I have done over the years with shipments of maple syrup from a family farm next to mine.
So Good News! I am bringing this tradition back to share with you, our VIP Gold Patients!
What is a VIP Gold patient, you ask?
Well, you know that we consider you ALL as VIP patients! You love and appreciate us and tell your friends how caring and professional we are!
That’s a Very Important Patient.
Many of you send us your wonderful friends and family. That’s the VIP Gold status. And when this happens, we send you something as a heartfelt thank you.
Like Grade A Vermont Maple Syrup from the family farm down the road from mine!
Or sometimes we send a custom Cutts Family Vermont cutting board from my childhood friend’s woodworking shop. That would be Don Smead of Smead Woodcraft in Putney (look at his beautiful craftsmanship in the photo below!).
(Or other times we send a gift certificate for a dinner for two at Debby’s and my favorite restaurant in Temecula!)
It’s just one way we say “Thank you!” for making our office nearly 90% personal referral-based!
As always, it is our honor to be chosen to be your dental family!
Much love,
Dr. Cutts
