Steam's Up at Sanger's Sugar House

When the sap starts boiling and steam is hanging in the air above the sugar house, the Sanger family is hard at work, doing what they love to bring you pure maple goodness.

Story and photos by Elizabeth Piseczny

Warm, sunny days accompanied by clear, blue skies and cold nights when the mercury dips below zero are teasing those who are eagerly awaiting spring. But for Lee and Kim Sanger, of Sanger’s Sugar House, the brighter skies and warmer weather mean a great season for maple syrup. The rest of the North Country is eagerly awaiting the first robins and sprouting seedlings of spring, but to the Sangers, when the steam’s up at the sugar house, spring is already here.

“You have to tap the trees before the weather gets just right. There’s a real science to the whole thing,” Kim says.  The first step in the sugaring process is tapping the trees, drilling a tiny hole into them and inserting a spout. The alternating warmth and cold of the early spring days determines the quality and quantity of the sap flowing in the sugar maples. It has to be perfect, because heat changes the sap, affecting the color and flavor of the syrup.

In the past, the sap would drip from the spouts into buckets, which would then be collected and taken from the sugarbush to the sugar house. “When I was a kid, we had buckets on trees. Until the mid-eighties, there were buckets on all the trees,” Lee Sanger says. With the process of sugaring so dependent on external forces, a lot of tradition is involved in creating a final output of the sweet, amber syrup that is almost unrecognizable compared to the watery sap drawn from the maples.

Lee is the third generation of his family to live and make syrup on the former farm. Lee’s grandfather, Walter Sanger, bought the property in 1924, and began making syrup in 1925. Back then, maple sugar “wasn’t a luxury, like it is now. It was a necessity,” Kim says. Walter taught his son, Ben, and Ben passed down the family tradition to Lee. “That’s one of the neat things about sugarin’— it’s a family oriented, very traditional activity,” Kim Sanger says. In December of 2000, Lee moved back home to the sugar house and took control of the sugaring business. “I always wanted to live here and do this. We couldn’t imagine not doing it. It’s a labor of love, basically,” Lee says of running the sugar house where he grew up.

"That’s one of the neat things about sugarin’— it’s a family oriented, very traditional activity."

While the sugar house hasn’t been a functional farm in years, it used to be a working dairy farm. When the barn burned down in 1968, Kim says, Lee’s family lost the animals and decided that it wouldn’t be worth it to continue as a farm.     

Now, the Sanger family members work day jobs all year long, gearing up for syrup season in March and early April. Lee, an electrician, and Kim, an MRI technician, no longer have the tough work of running a farm, so the sugarbush lies dormant until sugaring season.  When the time comes, the whole Sanger brood comes together to tap the trees, boil down the syrup and eventually host the annual Pancake Weekend put on by the North Country Squares, a square dancing group that depends on Pancake Weekend as its largest fundraiser.

In an industry that depends on the cyclical rhythm of nature, tradition and modern science have joined together to create a more efficient process. All sugar houses make syrup in basically the same way, but with varying degrees of technology. Sanger’s was the first syrup producer in the area to use oil-fire evaporators, which is more efficient than burning wood to boil off the water, the Sangers explain. Now, they keep up with modern technology with a tubing system that collects the dripping sap and transports it to a holding container.

The sugar house, where the sap is heated to seven degrees above the boiling point, contains all the equipment used to create syrup, which is graded according to its color. The earlier the syrup is made, the lighter its color and better its quality. “All we make is grade A light and medium amber,” Kim explains. The Sangers don’t make grade B syrup, because “that was crap, according to Lee’s grandfather,” she says with a laugh.

So, in keeping with tradition, the Sangers only produce the best, but “we’re really kind of small potatoes, at 1000 taps,” Kim says. “A good crop is 250 gallons.” Thirty of the first gallons of the syrup produced are set aside for the Pancake Weekend, which is now in its 39th year. Held this year on April fourth and fifth, “People come from Vermont and Canada. It’s a real tradition. A lot of college kids come,” Sanger says of the fundraiser. While Sanger’s is the location, the true host of the weekend is the North Country Squares, who set up tents covering the yards surrounding the sugarhouses and feed the hoards of people who park along the road and wait in long lines just to get a taste of the food.

Bob West, a member of the North Country Squares and its former president, was the man behind the creation of Pancake Weekend. “He’s the driving force,” Lee says.  West and several members of the North Country Squares were brainstorming ideas to fundraise when he came up with holding a pancake breakfast at a sugar house. Bob had never been involved with Sanger‘s Sugar House before, but, he says, “I’m from Chazy and Ben’s from Chazy. I just knew about him and his family for years. I stopped over to see him and tell him we had a meeting and we were talking about having pancakes and sausage at his sugar house. I asked him if he’d be interested and he said sure.”

"The atmosphere—people like it, and the sugarhouse. I’ve never heard a negative comment; everybody loves it out there."

Now, the Pancake Weekend is the Sanger’s big annual event. “They run the maple syrup and we run the pancakes. We have a very good relationship with them. They’re very good to us and we’re very good to them,” West says.

The Pancake Weekend works in favor of everyone involved, it seems. The North Country Squares always have a successful fundraiser, the Sangers get to show off their hard work and sell syrup, and the people have a great time. West says, “Some people have been coming back for the 39 years we’ve been out there. The atmosphere—people like it, and the sugarhouse. I’ve never heard a negative comment; everybody loves it out there. They say they’re the best pancakes they’ve had.”  The Pancake Weekend is a tradition that looks like it’s going to be around for a long time.

While the Sangers plan to enjoy the many years they have to come at the sugar house, it hasn’t been determined who will continue the traditions that have been established. They don’t yet know who will take over the family business, but hope their nieces might be up to the challenge. The family is raised from birth as part of the “maple syrup dynasty,” Kim calls it, so they are optimistic in “hoping somebody will keep it going.”

Have you ever been to the Pancake Weekend at Sanger's?