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Speaker 1: This season, we're bringing you stories about people finding their
Speaker 1: professional stride by virtue of who they know, whether it's
Speaker 1: breathing new life into an age old profession, taking the
Speaker 1: reins and a family business, forging your own path with
Speaker 1: a new idea, or landing the perfect job doing something
Speaker 1: you'd never before even considered. Today reporter Otis Gray ventures
Speaker 1: out into the deep woods of rural Vermont to meet
Speaker 1: the Stewart family. Vermont is a state historically known for
Speaker 1: its agrarian businesses, but a lot of these jobs have
Speaker 1: faded away over the last few decades. In this iconic
Speaker 1: New England landscape, the Stewarts run a high stakes operation
Speaker 1: that is totally dependent on each other, the community, and
Speaker 1: the environment they live in. Here's Otis. So for the
Speaker 1: Stewart family, today is a big day. Yeah, today is
Speaker 1: game day, if not the super Bowl. So we're doing
Speaker 1: the thing. That's twenty three year old Tanner Stewart and
Speaker 1: he says super Bowl because running the Stewart's business is
Speaker 1: like running a football team if the off season were
Speaker 1: ten to eleven months long. His brother Elliott and his
Speaker 1: dad Mark agree, Yeah, Yeah, it's that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 1: It's like the playoffs every day and if you if
Speaker 1: you lose the Super Bowl, that sucks. You've got to
Speaker 1: think about it for a year. And that's basically what happens.
Speaker 1: It's a lot to uh to take on, but at
Speaker 1: the same time, there's a lot of good rewards. The
Speaker 1: reason the stakes are so high is because the family
Speaker 1: is in the third year of running Stewart Maple. Maple
Speaker 1: syrup is a huge commodity in the Green Mountain State
Speaker 1: and is a big part of its identity, kind of
Speaker 1: like how wine is to Italy. But the window for
Speaker 1: harvesting maple syrup usually lasts only three to five weeks.
Speaker 1: So unlike most businesses, where if you have a bad month,
Speaker 1: you just try to do better the next one, the
Speaker 1: Stewarts have to make enough money in just one month
Speaker 1: to support them and their business. And no matter how
Speaker 1: much they prep in the off season, a lot of
Speaker 1: their success is totally dependent on the weather. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And that's I guess that's the uniqueness of it all,
Speaker 1: is that we really are are on a small window
Speaker 1: from that winter to summer range where we gotta make everything.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be following Elliott today, but it's important to
Speaker 1: note that the whole family has gone all in on
Speaker 1: Stewart Maple um taras Stewart again, Elliot's brother. My name
Speaker 1: is Elissa Turgeon. I'm Elliott Stewart's fiance. I'm Mark Stewart,
Speaker 1: Elliot's dad, all right, Paul Stewart his uncle. I'm Gina
Speaker 1: and of course his mom, Gina Stewart, who Elliott says,
Speaker 1: the unsung hero of the business. Oh that's really nice.
Speaker 1: I make cookies. That's the most important part. She's being modest.
Speaker 1: She runs the finances of the business and a million
Speaker 1: other things, while the rest play pivotal roles as well,
Speaker 1: from sales to social media to the actual boiling of
Speaker 1: the syrup. Yeah, every single person in our family plays
Speaker 1: a huge role in the business. And uh, there's not
Speaker 1: really one person that could be replaced. Having grown up
Speaker 1: in Vermont myself, I know that every winter is completely
Speaker 1: different and you never know what it will bring. But
Speaker 1: for the Stewarts, that unknown is directly tied to their livelihood,
Speaker 1: and every year around March it always comes down to
Speaker 1: one question, will the sap run. It's a beautiful sunny
Speaker 1: March day, snow on the ground, and Elliott Stewart is
Speaker 1: trying to start our snowmobile so we can go out
Speaker 1: into the woods that doesn't run. To make syrup, you
Speaker 1: first drill a hole into a maple tree and you
Speaker 1: tap a little pipe into it. When it gets about
Speaker 1: freezing the tree, sap drips out of the tap, looking
Speaker 1: kind of like water, you collect it and then you
Speaker 1: boil it down to make it more pure and syrupy.
Speaker 1: But it takes a lot to make a little. About
Speaker 1: forty gallons of sap will make one gallon of syrup.
Speaker 1: So the Stewards have to tap a lot of trees
Speaker 1: to make a profit. And this year they've tapped twenty
Speaker 1: thousand trees. And one of Elliott's jobs is to go
Speaker 1: around the woods and make sure that all of those
Speaker 1: taps are working just the way that they should. Right,
Speaker 1: we're up, so I'm on the back as Elliott takes
Speaker 1: me through the winding trails of the Stewart's sugar Bush,
Speaker 1: suggar Bush being acres of land and maple trees that
Speaker 1: the family has tapped to collect pure maple sap. The
Speaker 1: lines go eight thousand feet in each direction from the
Speaker 1: sugar house. It's about a little over six hundred acres
Speaker 1: of of lines that flow to the sugar house, so
Speaker 1: it's it's quite a bit of ground to cover. The
Speaker 1: land itself is shaped like a bowl, a little valley
Speaker 1: surrounded by mountains covered in maple trees. Light blue tubes
Speaker 1: that collect sap run like phone lines through the woods
Speaker 1: and along the trail. It's tough to ring. And we're
Speaker 1: riding along a trail that looks down at an alarming
Speaker 1: steep ravine on the left hand side the main lines
Speaker 1: on our left here there are two inch pipes and
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's a long ways down to the river
Speaker 1: down below. So you're climbing down in this ridge. It's
Speaker 1: like well like sixty degrees trying to get the taps in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's steep. It's definitely. There's some spots where you're
Speaker 1: just like you're hanging on you know, you gotta climb
Speaker 1: with your hands and some spots and those are those
Speaker 1: are always fun days. Nobody wants to go to that
Speaker 1: section of the woods. You break your ankle, you're on
Speaker 1: your own on a snowmobile, riding through some of New
Speaker 1: England's iconically beautiful woods. You might get kind of jealous
Speaker 1: that this is Elliott's day to day job. Yeah, it's definitely.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not mad about it. It's definitely. It's
Speaker 1: not it's not too bad of a thing. Fair weather.
Speaker 1: It's all good. It's the nasty days that that are hard.
Speaker 1: It is an all sweet, delicious syrup and Robert Frosty
Speaker 1: and landscapes. The business end of Stewart maple Aside. Their
Speaker 1: success is highly dependent on mother nature, so there are
Speaker 1: a lot of variables and the stakes are high. Most
Speaker 1: of their days are taken up just maintaining the lines
Speaker 1: between fallen trees and leaks or bad taps and animals
Speaker 1: biting the lines, anything could interfere with the SAP running.
Speaker 1: If you don't take things day to day, it's very overwhelming,
Speaker 1: you know, when you think about the woods as a whole.
Speaker 1: Um we have acres of land with trees down everywhere.
Speaker 1: And if you're like, if you wake up in the
Speaker 1: morning and you think you're gonna get it done that day,
Speaker 1: like you're gonna drive yourself crazy. You gotta take a
Speaker 1: day to day and do one step at a time,
Speaker 1: and as long as you're working hard and getting something
Speaker 1: done every day, it's one step in the right direction. Anyway,
Speaker 1: just being out here in the woods all the time,
Speaker 1: you're out in the fresh air and you can think
Speaker 1: so clearly and um so that honestly, it kind of
Speaker 1: helps me to be able to process things where you
Speaker 1: have like five million different things going on, but you
Speaker 1: can you can easily kind of just go through everything
Speaker 1: in your head because just there's no distractions. You're out
Speaker 1: here in the woods, there's no noise, it's just cold,
Speaker 1: and you're just you're just out there hiking. By the
Speaker 1: time you get tired or you're cold, you go back
Speaker 1: in and you do it all again the next day,
Speaker 1: and there's no there's no weekends. You just do it
Speaker 1: any day the weather is good. It's relaxing in a sense.
Speaker 1: So that's what you don't want. So that's a that's
Speaker 1: a big league so that what that does. You can
Speaker 1: see in the line. Each one of these blue lines
Speaker 1: connects to many trees. They all run down to the
Speaker 1: sugar house below where we started our ride. The lines
Speaker 1: are airtight and pull the SAP through a vacuum system
Speaker 1: through the woods. But if there's a leak like this one,
Speaker 1: there's no vacuum pressure and any trees behind that leak
Speaker 1: will be stopped from running as well. Again, this is
Speaker 1: one of twin eight thousand taps that they have to
Speaker 1: keep an eye on. This one's a pretty steep one
Speaker 1: right here, riding down one of the trails, and we
Speaker 1: have to duck under a big treat that felt right
Speaker 1: down over one of the main lines a pretty common
Speaker 1: nuisance that becomes a serious problem with big storms like
Speaker 1: this past fall November December time. There we had that
Speaker 1: crazy heavy wet snow that blanketed the trees, snap branches,
Speaker 1: and uh so we just had we had quite a
Speaker 1: mess on our hands. Um it looked like a bomb
Speaker 1: went off in the woods. Like, oh man, we had
Speaker 1: all these lines all cleaned up ready to go, and
Speaker 1: then uh oh, we gotta go back through more chain,
Speaker 1: said work for a couple of weeks. Elliott's twenty five now.
Speaker 1: He spent a year at college before deciding he wanted
Speaker 1: to come back home and go full time into sugaring.
Speaker 1: He eventually convinced his brother Tanner, who's now twenty three,
Speaker 1: to do the same. And this is unique here. A
Speaker 1: lot of young people are leaving Vermont to go find
Speaker 1: work in bigger cities and lesser sticking around to carry
Speaker 1: on the agrarian businesses that have long been a big
Speaker 1: part of the culture. Yeah. We we definitely are on
Speaker 1: an island. It's definitely. Uh, there's just not a lot
Speaker 1: of people doing like going out on the limb and
Speaker 1: and just hoping that it works. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we're fortunately our parents have supported us with it. My
Speaker 1: dad's done a similar thing where he was a carpenter
Speaker 1: all his life and uh, and he took went out
Speaker 1: on the limb with us, um and did the sugaring
Speaker 1: full time. UM. So we've we've we've basically got to
Speaker 1: the point where we're like, Okay, well, if we're gonna
Speaker 1: do this, we have to leap. And I think that's
Speaker 1: actually what's made us pretty successful at it is that
Speaker 1: we are one percent committed. So like when we go
Speaker 1: home at the end of the day, we talked about
Speaker 1: maple syrup. We wake up in the morning where everything
Speaker 1: is maple all the time, and so we have there's
Speaker 1: about seventy acres of trees over there, and have town
Speaker 1: and so that at times can can be a negative
Speaker 1: because we struggle to shut off from it. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of times where it's just like, wow, we've
Speaker 1: talked nothing about life at all outside of maple syrup.
Speaker 1: In the off season, the Steward spend the entire year
Speaker 1: prepping for this month, removing old lines, making new trails,
Speaker 1: repairing damage ones, drilling new trees, finding vendors to buy
Speaker 1: the syrup. Once they have it. It's a monumental amount
Speaker 1: of work that all leads up to right now. You know,
Speaker 1: you work for nine months, ten months, you don't ever
Speaker 1: make a penny. You get to a point where you
Speaker 1: can start to question what you're doing. You're like, wow,
Speaker 1: I haven't made a single dollar and in a long time.
Speaker 1: You have to really have a good mindset with it
Speaker 1: and have to trust that you know what you're doing,
Speaker 1: because if you start to question it, then it's like,
Speaker 1: oh boy, we got we got issues. We'll get back
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Speaker 1: And now back to our story. We'll back down in
Speaker 1: the sugar house. You can see pretty quick that after
Speaker 1: putting in all of that work, the payoff can be
Speaker 1: pretty sweet. That is the sound of sap flowing a
Speaker 1: lot of it down at the sugar house. All the
Speaker 1: lines from the woods feed into this big cement box
Speaker 1: the size of a small basement, lined with a food
Speaker 1: safe plastic. Really good site for you. Yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: this is exciting. This is the excitement that we wait
Speaker 1: for for throughout the year. This is what we work for.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's rewarding to see it happened like this.
Speaker 1: That is a swimming pool filled with a what's sap?
Speaker 1: I think will probably be uh close to um eight
Speaker 1: tho gallons of sap over the last like forty eight hours,
Speaker 1: which is a lot. This basement size holding tank where
Speaker 1: the sap runs into it fills fast. And now this
Speaker 1: is when Elliott's dad Mark lets the sap flow into
Speaker 1: a giant boiler that looks like a stainless steel train car.
Speaker 1: And this right here is how they make their finished product.
Speaker 1: They boil out most of the water, turning the sap
Speaker 1: from two percent sugar into sixty six sugar. So how
Speaker 1: many gowns are you gonna be making it? Anything? Probably
Speaker 1: around five gallons somewhere in there, five to six hundred
Speaker 1: gallons of syrup finished product, finished product, Yet lots of syrup.
Speaker 1: In a short amount of time. With the day being
Speaker 1: game day, I asked the rest of the family how
Speaker 1: they were feeling today. Is awesome. It's wonderful to see
Speaker 1: the sun come out and the SAP finally run and
Speaker 1: it's a good thing. And how's the Super Bowl going today?
Speaker 1: Not bad? I think we're we're up at halftime. We're
Speaker 1: doing well right now, so not mad about it, that's
Speaker 1: for sure. The game is strong today. We've got a
Speaker 1: great chance of taking this one home. Also, the steam
Speaker 1: of the maple syrup smells pretty good, so you're kind
Speaker 1: of in like a little like maple syrup high when
Speaker 1: you're in there, so the maple bubble exactly. So it's
Speaker 1: a good day for the Stewart family. And after touring
Speaker 1: the woods in the sugar house, I could tell that
Speaker 1: the reason for their success is because they all rely
Speaker 1: on each other. Like Elliott said, none of them can
Speaker 1: be replaced, and seeing them work together, that is abundantly clear.
Speaker 1: But just as much as a family depending on each
Speaker 1: other to make a livelihood, a lot of their business
Speaker 1: depends on the community too. There's a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of hoops to jump through, a lot of different
Speaker 1: roadblocks along the way. But with the support of of
Speaker 1: the community, um, you know it, Uh, it's made it
Speaker 1: all happen. In return, they've actually given opportunities to their
Speaker 1: neighbors that didn't even exist before, like the Stewarts leasing
Speaker 1: trees from their neighbors each year at a dollar apiece.
Speaker 1: It kind of gives landowners of Avenue to to make
Speaker 1: a little money off their property. And you know, it
Speaker 1: adds up fast as the least payment. Um, so they
Speaker 1: appreciate a check in the spring and uh in a
Speaker 1: gallon of stirrup or whatever, and so like it's a
Speaker 1: kind of a new way to make a little and
Speaker 1: come off of a property. I also I have to
Speaker 1: mention a few other byproducts of the Stewart's maple business
Speaker 1: that really blew my mind. First, right next to that
Speaker 1: swimming pool sized tank filled with sap is an equally
Speaker 1: big tank filled with crystal blue water. This year, we'll
Speaker 1: we'll produce a million gallons of water, a million gallons.
Speaker 1: That's because they actually on the sap through a reverse
Speaker 1: osmosis machine before they boil. Basically, it's just a machine
Speaker 1: that helps separate the water from the sugar so they
Speaker 1: can save a little bit of money on boiling. That
Speaker 1: separated water is pure beautiful water that they can sell
Speaker 1: to a bottled water company that specializes in just that,
Speaker 1: and um, we have a contract with them to start
Speaker 1: selling it as tree filtered organic water. Pretty cool. Second,
Speaker 1: all those trails that they've made to work on their
Speaker 1: lines are now open to everyone as a public hiking
Speaker 1: trail system, which I think is just amazing. And lastly,
Speaker 1: they've inadvertently become environmental warriors of sorts. That's because the
Speaker 1: way that the stewarts are growing and the more land
Speaker 1: that they occupy, it means that they play a big
Speaker 1: role in the landscape around them thriving. So they regularly
Speaker 1: work with a forester to always make sure that they're
Speaker 1: tapping responsibly and with the least thing that they do
Speaker 1: for their neighbors. Elliott preaches the long term economic value
Speaker 1: of sugaring versus cutting down a tree for its lumber.
Speaker 1: If we can promote the value of the woods, they
Speaker 1: won't be cut down because there's more value to keeping
Speaker 1: them standing. Like sugaring, UM is really tied to the
Speaker 1: forest health real heavily, and uh, you know, we're really
Speaker 1: reliant on on the healthy woods, which is what we're
Speaker 1: trying to always work to achieve that. Just as the
Speaker 1: maple syrup that they make now is a perfect representation
Speaker 1: of the land, they are becoming a big part of
Speaker 1: the area's identity, and with each other to rely on,
Speaker 1: they only have plans to keep growing. You know, we've
Speaker 1: grown the our our business to where our business kind
Speaker 1: of our sandbox is a lot bigger than it used
Speaker 1: to be. I guess is a simple way to put
Speaker 1: a giant playground. I mean, we were always in the
Speaker 1: woods and uh building forts in the woods. Uh, our
Speaker 1: hands are always dirty, our clothes are always dirty. We're
Speaker 1: always outside and uh, you know, this work is literally
Speaker 1: no different than my childhood. You know, it's literally the
Speaker 1: same exact thing where it's the same hill. You know,
Speaker 1: it's the uh the same area, and uh you know
Speaker 1: I can get out there and enjoy it literally what
Speaker 1: we did as as kids, you know, and uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's fun. We're on the job my motus. Gray, thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to On the Job, brought to you by
Speaker 1: Express Employment Professionals. Find out more at Express pros dot com.
Speaker 1: This season of On the Job is produced by Audiation
Speaker 1: and dread Seat Ventures. Our executive producer is Sandy Smallens.
Speaker 1: Our producer is Otis Gray. The show is mixed by
Speaker 1: Matt Noble at The Loft in Bronxville, New York. Find
Speaker 1: us on I Heart Radio and Apple Podcasts. If you
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