SANDY BAY TOWNSHIP, Maine — In the deep, remote forests that mark western Maine’s Canadian border, two young farmers are using modern alchemy — the kind that consists of hard work, good trees, heat and time — to turn maple sap into gold.
For VJ Guarino and Carrie Braman of Frontier Sugarworks, the 200-acre sugarbush they’re leasing from the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands — and the maple syrup they are making — is the culmination of years of work and dreams. The land is also where the husband and wife love to spend their time.
“We feel really lucky,” Braman, 34, said. “I have friends who like to go snowshoeing on the weekend. That’s just our lives.”
The teacher and freelance writer said she first caught the maple syrup bug when she was a student at Vermont’s Bennington College. There, she co-founded the school sugaring club, where members collected sap in buckets and boiled it into syrup over a campfire.
“I loved it,” she said.
Guarino, 35, grew up in New Hampshire and worked for local sugarmakers when he was a student at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont. After Guarino and Braman met, they continued making maple syrup with a backyard-style hobby operation.
“We knew we wanted to go all-in at some point,” she said. “Let’s just do it if we can.”
The chance to go for it came after they moved to Maine in 2009, when Braman got a teaching job at the Wayfinder School in Camden. They started looking everywhere to find land to start a sugaring operation, concentrating their search in the far west and far northern parts of Maine.
“That’s the best land for maple,” Braman said.
Their search for land happened at the same time the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry launched a new maple leasing program as a way to assist Maine’s maple producers, according to John Bott, spokesman for the department. Right now, the department has three sugarbush leases, all in the western region of the state.
According to the terms of Frontier Sugarworks’ 20-year lease with the state, Guarino and Braman can have as many as 14,000 taps on the 200 acres of land. The other two leases are held by Jerome Frigon, who is allowed up to 20,000 taps on 314 acres, also in Sandy Bay Township, and Chris Botka, who is allowed 2,200 taps on 50 acres on Bald Mountain in Rangeley.
Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry Commissioner Walt Whitcomb said the state is interested in developing its maple syrup industry. Two years ago, Gov. Paul LePage said Maine could be the national leader in making maple syrup because it has more maple trees than Vermont, which dominates the national maple landscape.
“If we decide to get organized, get more young people and develop the market. … Maine could do anything it wants,” Kathryn Hopkins, a maple products specialist with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, told the BDN in 2014.
According to Whitcomb, it takes a long-range plan to encourage the maple industry. That’s one reason the long sugarbush leases make sense.
“I don’t think maple is anything but growth,” the commissioner said this week. “The key is the trees. Grow it, harvest it and sell it: That’s the common theme for any natural resource.”
Before Braman and Guarino started leasing the 200-acre sugarbush from the state, the land had been selectively logged to leave the maple trees behind. When they started working the parcel, they had no sugarhouse to process the sap but spent the first few years selling their sap to other processors.
That changed when they obtained a $100,000 loan through Coastal Enterprises Inc. to build a sugarhouse and buy key equipment, such as an evaporator.
“For three years now, we’ve been selling syrup,” Braman said. “It’s going really well, although we’re not over the scary financial hump just yet.”
As of now, miles of plastic tubing brings clear sap from 5,000 taps to their new sugarhouse. They love the wildlife they see on the land — with a few caveats. Squirrels, bears and moose can bite holes in the tubes.
“And what will often happen is a moose will come running through and knock over the tubing,” Braman said.
So the farmers have to keep checking on the tubes, making sure they are in good working order. And as is the case with all farmers, Braman and Guarino need nature to cooperate in order to have a good harvest. Last winter, with its record-breaking cold temperatures and many feet of snow, didn’t provide the best conditions for maple syrup. When spring came, it came fast, Braman said, and the suddenly warm temperatures put a halt to the harvest. Last spring, they made 21 barrels, or about 1,155 gallons of certified organic syrup.
This spring, with its freezes and thaws, already seems more promising. They started boiling March 8, more than a month earlier than they did in 2015, but the sap has not stopped flowing yet.
“We’ve been doing really well this year, which is a huge relief,” Braman said. “We’re hoping to make 40 barrels. Our big joke is that we’re going to go to Las Vegas if we make 40. Neither of us wants to go to Las Vegas, but we’re still hoping the season will extend to the end of April.”
During the sap season, Guarino doesn’t leave the sugarbush.
“He’s got a maple baby,” Braman said. “He’s got to check all the equipment every three hours.”
But she does leave from time to time. They own a straw-bale house in Northport, about three hours from Sandy Bay Township, and so have been cultivating ties with stores and customers along the state’s more heavily populated coast. Frontier Sugarworks syrup is available at farmers markets in Camden and Northeast Harbor, at the Belfast Co-op, the Portland Co-op, the Good Tern Co-op in Rockland and Dot’s in Lincolnville, among other locales. Braman also is trying to diversify their product line and makes maple sugar, maple candy, maple-glazed nuts and more.
“We’re busy,” Braman said.
That’s for sure, according to Whitcomb, the commissioner.
“Frontier is a wonderful example. They’ve worked awfully hard running those lines and getting their boiling operations together,” he said. “It’s an immense amount of work. People think of making maple syrup as a two week or three week harvest, but it’s months of work in preparation and then three weeks or five weeks of intensity.”
Braman said she enjoys the work.
“I love boiling so much. The smell, the taste,” she said. “And it’s a fun way to bring in the spring, to be outdoors the whole time.”