An excellent and fascinating story by Dave Mance III was recently published that tells the history of Vermont maple sugaring legend, Colonel Henry Fairfax Ayres. From Mance’s story, one gets the impression that Ayers was a larger-than-life figure, and the sort of person you only read about and almost never meet in real life. From his military pedigree and exploits, to his friendship with Norman Rockwell, Ayres, who died in 1979, was a man you noticed and remembered. Mance himself has his own connection to Ayres, as he now taps the same Shaftsbury, Vermont sugarbush worked by Ayres for over 4o years.
The Colonel was an inventive man as well, both in and out of the sugarbush. He installed a pipeline of one-inch steel with stand pipes for moving sap in his sugarbush years before today’s plastic tubing became the norm. He patented an early version of a check-valve style maple sugaring spile, and perhaps most well-known was his invention of a combination thermometer and hydrometer for sugarmakers, called a hydrotherm. Rather than my recounting any more of the interesting bits and pieces of his life, or his role and influence on the maple sugar industry, I’ll let you read and enjoy the article yourself.
The article appeared in the spring 2019 edition of Northern Woodlands, the magazine of the Center for Northern Woodlands Education. Northern Woodlands is a great magazine published four times a year and covers a wide range of forest related topics, with Dave Mance, himself a sugarmaker, at the helm as editor. As a fan of maple syrup history, Dave Mance was kind enough to share a copy of the article which can be found at this link or by clicking on the the above image Ayres. I strongly encourage you to check out Northern Woodlands magazine.
Correction – An earlier version of this blog post rather embarrassingly misspelled Colonel Ayres’ last name as Ayers. A special thank you to Henry Ayres, Colonel Ayres grandson, for alerting me of my mistake.