Life on the Farm in Rural Maine

Thomas Bryant- 2024 Young Sugar Maker Award by Maine Maple Producers Association

Thomas Bryant is an exemplary 8th grade student at Massabesic Middle School who continues to maintain a perfect 4.00 grade point average. He is a dedicated musician who plays in the school band and has earned numerous accolades for his talent. When not at school, he can be found helping out at Hilltop Boilers, where he is an invaluable asset. He is not only skilled at checking tubing lines, tapping, doing firewood and helping boil, but also adept at managing the retail store, packaging maple syrup, and labeling products. His hard work and efficiency have earned him great respect from his family and other workers.  Thomas is truly an outstanding young man.

Thomas is a talented woodworker who loves to create beautiful works of art with wood. He is an avid carver, crafting intricate and detailed animals with his expert hand. Thomas also loves to make luminary’s, creating beautiful works of light and shadow that can be used for decoration or to provide a warm glow to any room. He is always coming up with new ideas and inventions, making the most of his skill and imagination. Thomas’s woodworking is a testament to his creative talent and dedication to all that he does.

Thomas is a talented eighth-grade percussionist who has been honored by the Maine Music Educators Association with a spot in their prestigious band. He is passionate about his craft and enjoys finding new ways to challenge himself musically. In addition to his skill as a percussionist, Thomas has been using his talents to support the school drama club by running the sound system backstage. His enthusiasm and dedication to his craft has been instrumental in providing a positive and creative atmosphere for all involved.

Thomas can often be found running our labelling station at an impressive speed of 3000 bottles or more per day. Not to shabby for a young teenager.  Despite the fact that it is a tedious job, Thomas is extremely accurate and reliable, ensuring that all the jugs are correctly labelled for the individual companies we represent.

Thomas works tirelessly to help Hilltop Boilers grow and prosper. His commitment and passion for the maple industry have made a lasting impact especially for his youthful age. His dedication to the maple industry is remarkable, and well deserving of the Young Maine Maple Syrup Producers Award.

Julia Bryant- 2023 Young Sugar maker Award by Maine Maple Producers Association

Julia is currently an 8th grader at Massabesic Middle School and is actively involved in the day to day activities required to operate Hilltop Boilers Maple Syrup.  Julia is a talented young lady who knows how to get her hands dirty.  Whether it be doing firewood for the evaporator, maintaining tubing lines, or tapping trees, Julia will be there to help.  She is equally as talented when it comes to running our busy maple store or promoting maple syrup at events and fairs.  She is an amazing salesperson and is comfortable approaching and talking all things maple with customers, young and old.  She has a vast knowledge of our sales software and is the person that many of us go to when things don’t go right on the cash register.  With a smile on her face she brings a youthful knowledge and whit to the business that customers love.  

Julia is an exceptionally talented singer!  Recently, she played the lead role in the musical Junie B. Jones.  She has  auditioned for the Maine Music Educators’Association Music Festival and has been chosen for multiple years to be a part of this group.  Julia has recorded countless commercials for the Portland Radio Group that have been played hundreds, probably thousands, of time across the air waves throughout southern Maine.  Currently, her commercials promoting the Snowflake Trail (a group of southern Maine businesses) are playing on WPOR.  

Even though Julia spends multiple hours a day working for the sugaring business and singing, she still finds time to excel in her school studies.  She currently has a nearly perfect 4.00 GPA in all of her classes and has won the York County spelling bee two years in a row.  She is our Queen Bee!

Julia is actively involved in the community and also in the local church.  When an older family needed help moving,  she pitched in and helped them move into their new home.  She loves to bake treats for people and makes cupcakes that everyone craves.  

Julia is a talented and motivated young lady that has done amazing things for the maple industry and our  community in small town Maine.  She is well deserving of the Young Maine Maple Syrup Producers Award!

Congratulations to John Bryant- Winner of the 2020 Young Sugarmakers Award!- January 2020

John grew up in a sugarhouse and is well versed in the day to day operations of a sugaring operation. He worked faithfully to built our new sugarhouse and is now helping to build a new sugarbush in Limerick. He has mapped out every maple tree on this 45 acre bush.  He is a great helper when running tubing and he loves to check tubing lines for leaks with his snowshoes. During sugaring season, he can be found helping run the evaporator and packaging syrup. John is very talented in the marketing aspect of the business and often runs our maple store and the computer software on his own. He has a wonderful amount of sugaring knowledge that he shares with customers on a regular basis.

Beyond the sugarhouse John is currently maintaining a very high GPA in all of his classes at school. It is not uncommon for him to be on the high honors list for not one or two classes but all of them each semester. When he is not working on school work or the farm, he volunteers at our local church. There he works with elementary students on Thursday nights as a leader in the kids youth group.

John also loves to drive his John Deere Z930M around town mowing lawns and feeding cattle.

John is a delightful young man that is actively involved in his community and the maple industry.  As his parents, we couldn’t be more proud of him!

A few thoughts from Michael

As a child, I remember when we moved to Newfield.  Forty seven years later, I am raising my family on some of that same land and in so many ways, not much has changed. Often people will tell me how lucky I am to grow up and live on a farm in rural Maine. It doesnʼt take a lot of persuading to convince me of that. As I raise our three children here in Newfield, they learn so much from the farm. These are lessons that will serve them in every facet of “Life.”

Living on a farm makes one keenly aware of the four different season. Each season comes with its own challenges and rewards. Each new year is introduced in January with a few months of winter. Cold days, gloves, and hats. Wood fires at night and plenty of snow plowing, snow shoveling, and snow blowing. On the farm we have giant snow blowers made for making roads through the woods to our hundreds of maple trees. Often times a calf or two are born earlier than expected and the children just love to play with newborns calves in the barn. Children take nearly a year learning how to walk however, calves need only a few hours.

Spring is a very busy season on the farm. More calves are born. Trees are tapped and Maple Syrup is produced. Every day that the temperature gets above 38 degrees we boil sap at night. These days typically end around midnight and start again the next morning at 7:00. The children find plenty of mud to stomp in and a bucket or two to sip a little sap out of.  Thomas, age 14, loves to gather sap and is keenly aware of where every sap tank is located in Newfield.  By this time of year, the pigs are big enough to go to market and the black flies start to buzz. Manure is spread on the hay fields and the grass begins to grow. The garden is planted in May and by the end of spring, haying season is about to begin.

Summer is defined by the beginning and the end of haying season. We cut our horse hay on dozens of field primarily in the Newfield, Limerick, and Waterboro area. The children are responsible for age appropriate jobs. Older ones have to move hay while the younger ones bring popsicles to the hay field and play in the hay. We deliver the hay to many, many farms all over York County. Everything in the summer is scheduled around hay. Everything. No social activities allowed in the summer. If the sun is shining, hay will be making.   John, is happy show you all of the different hay fields we harvest as we “live” in them over the summer. Papa can tell you where every rock can be found on 150 acres of hay ground.

Once second cut is finished, Fall is well under way. Children are back in school and it is time for agricultural fairs. Grampa goes to fairs to judge horse and oxen pulling. Preparations are underway for the many fair events that we will participate in. The garden is harvested and vegetables are put away for winter. Cows are moved into the barn for the long cold winter. Firewood is cut and split for many houses including the sugarhouse. We hold plenty of open house days at the sugarhouse and promote Maple Syrup for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Maple Syrup is shipped all over the United States for corporate gifts and retail sales. Christmas will be a whole lot sweeter for the thousands of recipients on the other end of the package.

Everything one needs to know to run a successful Maple Syrup business can be learned from growing up on a farm. Hard work and dedication are a must. Quality products must be produced and marketed at a fair price. An equal amount of passion and perseverance is needed in all aspects of farming. Just as our parents did, we hope that we can instill these characteristics in our children. After all, each and every bottle of Maple Syrup leaves our farm with the Bryant Family name proudly displayed on the front. The flavor must be exceptional, the packaging just right. You should expect nothing less.

Galatians 6:9- “Let’s not get tired of doing good, because in time we’ll have a harvest if we don’t give up.”