We are making maple syrup the old fashioned way with a wood fire.

I'm Roderick Ewen Farnham junior.

But I go by my middle name, which is Ewan, and my mother was born on this property.

This is the Davis homestead land.

Been in the family since 1842.

We're in Elliotsville, Maine.

It's about a 2.5 hour drive north of Portland and right next door to Monson.

That's a beautiful site right there.

Yeah, yeah, it is working, isn't it?

Yeah.

It was Ewen Farnham's great grandfather who began the tradition of tapping trees on their land.

Ewen's Grandfather took over the task in 1900.

Yep.

A lot has changed in the world since then.

But at this camp, one tradition has survived.

You're getting her all cleaned up, Tim?

This is a family operation.

And you can't do it without family.

You can't do it by yourself.

And they're busy boiling down the sap that we collected during the week in the boiler and making in the end product, maple syrup.

As predictable as the return of springtime itself, Ewen leaves the comfort of his Scarborough home and takes off for camp.

It's remote and doesn't have much in the way of conveniences.

But Ewen keeps coming back.

Why do you do this?

Well, because it's in your blood.

You know, it's every year you say, no, I'm not going to do it next year.

And you know, the spring starts to come and your blood starts to thin a little bit.

The trees are waking up and it's a spring ritual to do it.

So you do it.

And I guess right now, or at least I am looking at passing it on to the next generation.

All right.

Now it can be bottled at any time.

I'm Tim, this is my father, Ewen.

I'm the oldest one here.

A little bit of a family resemblance, I'm told.

Okay.

Let's see.

Oh.

We've got.

Oh, this is very good.

It's a family tradition.

Yeah, it's a family tradition.

Going back since longer before.

Since I can remember.

I can remember my grandparents working here doing the maple sirup operation.

I call it kind of a family hobby gone wild.

We don't do it for the money.

We do it for the fun and for the togetherness.

Look around.

And what you see is family.

The roots are as strong and deep as the maples they tap.

Each member, young or old, has a job to do while they catch up on family business.

I am Alison Russell.

I am a fourth generation Farnham.

I think if we're counting back from the great grandparents that started Honeymoon Maple works.

I'm here to socialize.

I help a little.

I'm very good at filling the bottles, but I'm really here to connect with family and catch up with everyone.

My name is Nathan Farnham.

I'm the son of Tim Farnham and the grandson of Ewan Farnham.

And I got a day off from work to come up and help with the first first boil of the year.

How long have you been doing this for?

I mean, yeah, pretty much pretty much as long as I can remember my my whole life.

I would get passed through the window before there was a door in, in the camp when I was a baby.

This is my brother.

I his sister.

And he's now the oldest of that generation, and I'm the youngest of the generation.

My job is to get.

I don't have an assigned job.

I'm probably in charge of the bottling.

Very important thing is, at the end of the day, nobody can take any syrup away until we count up.

Here's one of our old labels with all the names.

It's a great way to be outdoors.

We typically take a nice long walk in the woods, and I think, I think the tradition feels really important.

It keeps us all connected.

And and it serves as a, as a home base to keep that extended family coming together.

I remember, you know, me and my cousin Dylan, we would we would come up here and not even partake in anything of the actual sugar works.

Just enjoying being up here like we would tromp around through the woods for, for hours, just just experiencing, you know, nature and experiencing the, the difference from, from, you know, your everyday life.

Take a stroll with Ewen around the camp and you get a feeling that you're walking back in time.

Did you see the nice new old ice box we have?

You did see the new outhouse.

I did.

Usable?

Yeah.

Yes it is.

No.

It's usable.

Yeah.

I guess it's time to put a piece of wood in.

Oh, yeah.

So what I want to show you while you're here.

This is my grandfather, Harry Davis, sap house.

And that was across the road just to the right of where the driveway comes out.

You can see that it was all fields here.

And so.

There was a time when Ewen left Maine for a job in the city.

He returned of course to work and continue to help tap and boil.

Ewen can walk just about anywhere on the property, and memories of past generations come back to life.

You know when my aunt died and I was here a couple of years, just over here, looking around.

There was a 1938 Chevrolet in this barn.

Prime condition.

Never been sold.

And then she died.

And that was in 64.

And I had just graduated from college, and I took a job in New York City.

So I was gone.

And I remember coming back, I asked my grandfather, well, what happened to the car anyway?

Oh, he said some dealer said he wanted it, so I sold it to him.

So we can go down to this tree down here if you want to.

It's not too far down.

So anyway, we've tapped those two trees and the line was running down.

While the family get togethers havn't really changed much over the years.

Other things have.

We used to have the metal taps.

We would drill the hole in the tree and we would put in the metal files, and we would hang milk jugs by wire.

In this tree We put two taps into it.

There's one and one over there.

And we would walk around with a five gallon bucket and empty each milk jug individually from the tree.

This line continues, goes down along the edge of the road and goes down there.

And it's that tank is down the road to where it is.

And then eventually, probably in the late 80s, dad started using the we went to the pipeline, tube networks.

Right.

And that's been refined over the years too.

And then there's the weather throughout much of New England, late frosts and sudden extreme warming can bring a sap run to an early end.

Research shows that the sugaring season in the northeast is shrinking.

The weather in southern Maine, where you are, there are at least a week ahead of us.

And then then it's us.

And then if you go way up north where the big producers are, they are a week behind us.

So you got somewhat of a three week window where depending on where you are.

I mean, North can have a good year and South have a bad year.

There's a little poem over there that says, you know, when the when the sap runs, it says Wind from the north sap pours forth.

Wind from the south, sap has a drought.

Wind from the east sap runs least when from the west, sap runs best.

Time changes things, even those things with the strongest roots.

On this patch of ground in northern Maine, a family lives with the past and seems determined to keep the family tradition alive.

I'm looking across the road here at a place where my great grandfather was.

I knew all the stories of the people that were here.

I knew where all the buildings were.

I know where things, things had been located.

And a lot of that is not here anymore.

It's a real nice reminder that you know you're not going to be here someday either, but at least hopefully they'll be able to tell some really good stories about you.

As we age, we've we've seen, you know, we've seen the older generations pass on and the younger generations grow into the roles.

And we don't have a new we don't have a baby generation yet, but probably coming, coming soon.

Hopefully we've got enough.

We've got enough cousins that we'll probably get there eventually.

If you wonder what Ewen put in the wood oven earlier, it's a treat for his family when the workday is done.

Another time honored tradition.

So part of the tradition in camp is to have a pot of baked beans on Saturday.

So about 10:00 this morning we threw the ingredients ready, had it in this woodstove oven all day.

And now we have taken out, A nice pot of fresh beans.