The New Yorker:

The region has long attracted idealists, from the radical performers of Bread & Puppet in the seventies to the striving artisan farmers of the early two-thousands.

By Hannah Goldfield

Around noon one recent Sunday, behind the wheel of a rented S.U.V. in dire need of snow tires, I barrelled down an icy dirt road in West Glover, Vermont, eyes peeled for a scrap of cardboard. I was on my way to meet Howie Cantor, one half of the couple behind the syrup-making operation Deep Mountain Maple, whose house—and sugar bush, as a grove of sap-rich trees is known—is at the end of a long, unmarked driveway. For my visit, Cantor had promised to fashion a sign, which I imagined would be small, tucked into brush or a forked tree branch. I laughed when I saw it: a cardboard box that I’d have trouble wrapping my arms around, with a house number scrawled in huge print. At the end of the road, I found Cantor, a sprightly man in his late sixties, with expressive caterpillar brows and a bushy gray beard. “O.K., let’s get you suited up!” he said, wasting no time before proffering fleece-lined waterproof pants, warm boots, and a pair of snow shoes, which he strapped on my feet before securing his own.

Cantor’s day was packed. Early that morning, he’d watched on TV as the U.S. defeated Canada in the Olympic hockey final; in a few hours, he’d be joining a “neighborhood ski,” a caravan of locals of all ages hitting the town’s winding forest trails to take advantage of a layer of fresh powder. In between, he had just enough time to take me on a tour of his sugaring setup. It would likely be weeks before the weather turned warm enough for sap to flow, but Cantor and his wife, Stephan, were almost done installing their taps, an annual exercise that they’ve performed for forty-odd years.

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