For weeks, industrial boilers and evaporators have been pumping full steam ahead as maple syrup season in western Massachusetts continues. It's a sweet enterprise that one family in Belchertown has been at for 50 years now.
If you wanted a quart or two of local syrup, some maple brown ale or a decent pulled pork sandwich, Sugarfest 2025 at Shattuck's Sugarhouse was your best bet over the weekend.
Hundreds of people made the trip to Route 202 Saturday, journeying over Jabish Brook and past a herd of Devon cows to take in the celebration. That included Jemmie Plasse and Charlotte Dobiecki, who made the trip from East Longmeadow.
“Ah, we got some maple hard candies, some maple cotton candy, and we got some brisket mac-and-cheese,” Plasse said, showing a paper bag full out of goods.
“We did not get the [Wagyu] Burnt Ends because they were sold out – apparently, we had to come early and that was not what we did!” Dobiecki told WAMC, referring to the burnt ends being offered by The North Elm Butcher Block, one of the vendors that set up shop Saturday.
For the Shattucks, it’s their third annual Sugarfest. It also spotlights a special anniversary for the family – 50 years of them tapping hundreds of trees, bringing sap to a boil and churning out maple syrup.
Judi Shattuck has been there since the beginning. She tells WAMC that, alongside her late husband, Will, their children and others – they took a regional tradition and ran with it.
“We started 50 years ago in the backyard, as many people do, and … each year, we got better, we got more interested and hooked, and we built the sugarhouse across the road,” she said outside the current sugarhouse, finished a few years prior.“[It] took us 14-and-a-half years to put this new building together with post and beam and wood that we harvested from here, where you're sitting.”
As a band plays for the hundreds on her family’s farm and a massive evaporator boils sap in the background, Judi cracks open scrapbooks.
Photos show the Shattucks collecting sap the old-fashioned way back in the day – carrying buckets, firing up the old evaporator and filling tins with syrup.
There’s also one of a very young Nate Shattuck, getting a taste of the sap straight from the tap.
“This was a photographer in town that sent this to National Geographic World, but he didn't get it published,” Judi says of the black-and-white photo. “But Nate was a great, great model.”
A couple decades later and about six feet taller, Nate says the family operation is still going strong – tapping some 1,100 trees and running an evaporator that can boil 200 gallons of sap an hour – processing almost 15-20 gallons of syrup Saturday alone.
“Here we are, with this beautiful building that my folks built from scratch - that was a dream of theirs to have a destination for folks to come. Well, we've got it and … we're blessed with a following, we're blessed with a town that supports us, we're blessed with an energy that's here, that is unmatched … and it’s special,” he tells WAMC after stepping away from the operation for an interview. “There's people coming up saying, ‘Thank you,’ ‘Thank you for doing this,’ ‘This is amazing,’ ‘I never knew this was here.’ I've spoken with people from Rhode Island, from Connecticut, from New York, from New Hampshire … I haven't met anybody from Maine today, but standing at my evaporator today in Belchertown, we've reached that many people.”
Nate says community partners and a small army of volunteers and friends make it all possible.
That includes longtime family friend Ben Williams, who has been helping with the operation since the 70s. Like Judi, he tells WAMC the spot’s come a long way since the first shack the family ran across the street.
If the weather cooperates, he says, things could continue for a few more weeks – or not. Such is the life for some syrup producers.
“Seems like we're just getting started this week, and it's supposed to be a little warm this week coming, so maybe it won't flow that much, but hopefully, we get back to some freezing nights and warm days, and we'll be making more,” he says as another sugarhouse worker loosens a valve, sending syrup into different sized syrup bottles. “Sometimes it goes a month, sometimes it goes two weeks - you never know what you're going to get!”
Attendees and Shattucks alike agree, having a gathering not quite as big but close to the size of the town fair in mid-March is a welcome change of pace.
Tom Shattuck, Will Shattuck’s brother, says the family also keeps its longtime farm going year-round – raising cattle, maintaining pastures as well as stretches of forest on a cutting plan.
There’s also the Devon Lane Farm Supply store across the street that he co-owned with Will, too. With all that in the mind, he adds, Sugarfest is something special.
“I think folks are just wanting to get out of the winter doldrums, experience a little bit of nature here. It's kind of a quiet, country road, and the sugarhouse is just the biggest attraction,” he said in front of the Devons, which spent the day watching attendees come and go. “Seeing that in operation - and my nephew's done a great job gathering other participants and food trucks and all that stuff - folks are just wanting to get out…”
To Judi, it’s all the product of countless hours put in by family and friends alike, not just for Sugarfest, but keeping the sugarhouse going for half-a-century.
“Dedication and hard work and commitment – I think that’s what makes it possible to do because many farms are fading and landscapes are changing, and we’re so lucky to be in a family compound, that we’re together and we all feel the same way,” she said. “And hopefully, our grandchildren and our children will keep it open as we have.”
