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In Memoriam

Jim MacIsaac
Owner, Highland Sugarworks

March 30, 1958 – November 1, 2011

In the brutal world of high-school males, some stand out for academics, some stand out for athletics, and some try not to stand out at all. Among the boys in the Taft School class of 1976, Jim MacIsaac and I flew under the radar: Me, a dumpy late-bloomer. Jim, good-looking with a steady girlfriend. We both were outside of the popular circles, but Jim seemed less concerned about it than I was. He never adopted the biting sarcasm that so defined and damaged adolescents, offering instead an easy smile to anyone who approached him. Remarkably, he got away with it.

Our lives intersected 15 years later at a Fancy Food Show. Jim and his wife, Judy, were looking to expand Highland Sugarworks' maple syrup sales to a national market. I was publishing a trade newspaper and still getting to know the industry. It wasn't hard to recognize Jim: He never lost his boyish good looks or positive demeanor.

In my short time in the industry, I'd come to learn that Specialty Food people generally fall into two groups: those who are behind their products, either creating, sourcing or producing them, and those who are out in front, focused on marketing and sales. Jim was definitely behind Highland Sugarworks’ products, gladly staffing the booth and leaving Judy to handle the selling and promotion.

Jim had gone from Taft to study dairy science at the University of Vermont. There he also learned the basics of the maple trade. After graduation, Jim became familiar with modern food production while working for several Vermont dairy companies.

In his formative years, Jim’s father aspired to be a forest ranger, but that wasn’t considered a serious career path. So he set aside his rustic ambitions to pursue a vocation in finance, eventually working in Manhattan. Jim’s family settled on three acres in Weston, Connecticut, then as rural as one could get while still within a ready commute to Manhattan. At home, James Sr. instilled in his two daughters and two sons a satisfaction in physical labor and the outdoors from an early age, with an endless array of projects from building bridges and tree houses to feeding chickens.

As the children grew older, the property in the Connecticut wasn’t enough to contain the family, so Jim’s parents sought out farmland out of state. Eventually, they found and acquired a rolling yet overgrown and decaying farm just outside of the Mad River Valley of Vermont. The family would travel up from Connecticut to work on the farm each weekend, clearing brush out of pastures so that they raise Scottish Highland cattle and set up two large Christmas tree plantations on the property.

Drawn to the family farm and eager to put his education and experience to work, Jim proposed re-opening the long-dormant sugaring operation in 1986. His father helped him get started, paying Jim a salary to extract syrup from the sugarbush.

The ideal sugar maple has ample access to sunlight through a well-formed, leafy crown, and maintains a reserve of sugar and starch beyond what it needs to support its own growth.

Tree damage seems to progress in slow motion. To what extent he can, the sugarer minimizes stresses that damage crop maples by thinning out competing trees, cutting partially fallen limbs to stave off invasive fungi and insects, all of which can affect the overall health of the tree and the quality of the sap. Defoliation late in the growing season can draw down sugar reserves while the trees attempt to recover, reducing the sweetness in the sap.

“40:1” is printed on one of Jim’s favorite tee shirts, referring to the 40 gallons of sap, on average, required to produce one gallon of syrup. A sweet sap could put that ratio at an efficient 29:1, less sweet at 57:1, increasing the amount of production necessary and reducing the yield. The less stress on the trees, the more likely the sap will maintain higher sugar content.

Traditionally gathered at each tree in galvanized buckets and collected manually, the sap in a modern sugaring operation now flows from tapped trees through plastic tubes, or drop lines, which run into larger tubes, eventually leading into mainlines, which feed into collecting vats.

Vermont’s sugaring-off season usually begins around Town Meeting Day in early March and runs through April. The sap runs best when the days are warm and the nights remain cold. At the onset of the season, the sugarer taps the trees by boring holes roughly three inches into the trunk. On the MacIsaac sugarbush, roughly 13,000 taps feed two main lines, one from the South Face of the property and one from the North Face.

The sap needs to be reduced to syrup promptly to retain its flavor. When it arrives at the sugar house, it is filtered and some water is removed by reverse osmosis. The rest is boiled off in an evaporator to produce syrup.

There’s always work to be done in the sugarbush, though Jim didn’t need an excuse. He gladly put his back into all of the workings of the operation. In addition to caring for the trees, Jim built the sugar house and the outbuildings – often with the help of family, friends, or employees, but rarely with professional construction help. He maintained his own equipment. Naturally self-sufficient, Jim was comfortable spending all day alone “playing,” as he called it, in the sugarbush, though when the bottling side of the business was slow, he would employ production workers who might otherwise be laid off to help in the woods.

Like many New England farms, the equipment had a homespun nature: Jim’s first shrink-band sealer in the bottling operation was cobbled together from an old LP record turntable, with a block of wood shaped to hold the bottle at center, and a couple of heat guns mounted on either side. The first evaporators were wood-fired, requiring constant attention to manage the temperature of the boiler.

As Jim's business grew more efficient and demand for his products rose, he began to purchase and bottle syrup from other producers around New England. He knew intrinsically what it took to run a sugaring operation, from the sugarbush through the production process. He was an honest trader, begrudgingly respected as a tough negotiator, and was known to travel deep into the North Woods of Maine to meet a producer, grade syrup and put a cash down payment on a season’s production.

There are federal standards for maple syrup, and it’s a matter of local pride that Vermont’s standards exceed federal requirements. Vermont maple syrup is graded against standards of sugar density (66.9 brix), clarity, light transmittal (Fancy, Medium Amber, Dark Amber, and Grade B) and taste.

Intent on improving production, sugarers have attempted to use pesticides on the trees and chemicals applied to keep taps open, but such practices have proven largely ineffective. Today, sugaring in New England is a natural process. Interested in elevating its brand, Highland took the extra measure to have the syrup produced from the MacIsaac sugarbush certified organic, which validated aspects of forest stewardship, syrup storage and dictated the kind of de-foaming agent used in the evaporator.

In addition to its organic products, the company innovated in packaging, winning an NASFT Outstanding Product Award for its exclusive snowman-shaped glass bottle in 2003. The company was recognized for bottling and branding its Grade B syrup – most often sold to food producers as an ingredient—as “Cooking Maple” for retail sale.

When not in production at the bottling plant or working on the farm in Starksboro, what little downtime Jim afforded himself was reserved for his family and for downhill skiing, with several of Vermont's best ski areas within minutes of home and work.

Jim and I spoke about holding "high-level business meetings" at one of his local ski areas, but it proved difficult to schedule around work and family. Finally, we made plans with Jeff Birnn of Birnn Chocolates to play hooky following a Vermont Specialty Food Association meeting. That morning, we woke up to find six inches of fresh, dry powder snow—a rarity in New England--and spent a rollicking weekday on the slopes.

Specialty Food people put so much of themselves into their products and their work that it's hard to separate business associates from friends. While the shows are focused on selling, personal relationships are forged. Lives are chronicled from Fancy Food Show to Fancy Food Show, where we learn about marriages, divorces, births, graduations.

So it was with Jim and me. He and Judy had a son, Dylan, in 1995. They divorced in 2003. I met Jim's new partner, Karen, at a show a few years later. During an evening at the San Diego Fancy Food Show in 2008, I saw Jim standing outside a restaurant in the Gaslight District, holding his daughter, Alexandria. Not yet two years old, she had grown restless at dinner. It took some urging on my part, but Jim let me hold Alexandria for a bit so that he could go back inside and finish his meal.

After their brilliant October color fades to brown and the leaves fall, the branches of the sugar maple lay bare. Thus November marks the beginning of "stick season" in the Northeast: a stark, cold transition before the snow accumulates and ski season begins. It’s a valuable time for the sugar maker to begin preparations for the upcoming season. Roads are cleared, damaged limbs cut, lines are checked, and equipment is repaired.

Like most experienced woodsmen, Jim wore a helmet to protect his head, ear guards to mute the noise of the chain saws, and chaps to protect his legs. Saws have brakes to ensure that the chain stops its cutting action should a hand slip off the grip. Beyond the obvious hazards of falling trees and branches, there are hidden perils: Knots can cause a saw to kick or buck, and hidden pressures can make a falling tree twist or jump unpredictably off the stump.

An early snow had come and gone when Jim was alone in the sugarbush on November 1st, clearing a few remaining trees away from one of the main lines. That day, Jim didn't come home to his family.

At this Winter Fancy Food Show in San Francisco, some will learn that Jim is gone, leaving his children, family, friends, and business behind.

For survivors, it’s natural for an early passing to inspire reflection on missed opportunities, regret for a life unfinished. Although his death was tragic, those who knew Jim well understand that he found more satisfaction in his work than in his accomplishments, and that he died doing what he loved in a place that was special to him.

Back in Vermont, the maples on the MacIsaac farm will stand quiet through the winter until the sun once again rises higher and warms them, first on the South face and then on the North face.

The sap will likely run sweet again in the sugarbush. Remembering Jim, we can seek joy in nature, engagement in our relationships, and integrity and pleasure in our life’s work.

A memorial fund has been established in Jim MacIsaac’s name at the University of Vermont. For more information, see http://www.uvm.edu/%7Epmrc/?Page=MacIsaac.htm.

Chris Crocker is the Senior Vice President of Media at the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade (NASFT). The guest letter featured above originally appeared in abbreviated form in the January/February issue of Specialty Food Magazine.