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large expenses. “I have to sell a million dollars worth every month just to keep things running,” he said one afternoon. During that summer he put some of the employees on partial furlough, four-day weeks.
    I then asked if he regretted taking on the new project.
    “Absolutely not.”
    When Arnold secured the Gold Coast order the whole outlook changed. Going into the fall Bruce scoured about looking for Vermont syrup and put a statement in his catalogue that he was “looking for Vermont.” He made calls from the office and took drives up north. But the need was too great to fill by calling individual sugarhouses. Ultimately he called on his counterpart, David Marvin of Butternut Mountain Farms, who controlled the supply in northern Vermont—had it locked up, Bruce liked to say. Actually, Marvin controlled fifty percent of the syrup in Vermont. He came to Bruce’s aid, selling him eighteen trailer loads, a couple of million dollars worth—65,000 gallons. He was happy to move out inventory to make room for the next year’s crop.
    By the summer of 2011, a year after beginning construction on the new building, Bruce had 5.5 million pounds of syrup in storage—not enough to fill the basement but enough, he figured, to carry him to the end of the year.

    W ORD TRAVELS FAST in the maple syrup industry, and as the 2012 season approached, Bruce received inquiries about his company. He got an offer from the head of a venture capital firm that entered into the maple business by purchasing a Canadian maple company named L.B. Maple Treats. Nowthat the financial situation had changed between Canada and the United States due to the monetary exchange rate, L.B. Treats was looking for a footprint in the United States and wanted to buy American syrup. “It would have made me a very rich man,” Bruce said of the offer, “but I would never sell.” He also received a proposal to manage the company from a Canadian named Tom Zaffis, the previous manager of L.B. Treats who was now managing the equipment division of LaPierre Company in Quebec. Zaffis believed Bascom’s would keep him interested for a long time, and his proposal to become second-in-command had left Bruce feeling very excited. He had received a similar offer from a manager in Ontario who heard of the new developments.
    During that time, late in 2011, one of the companies in the second tier, Highland Sugarworks, underwent a traumatic change when its owner, Jim MacIsaac, died in the woods. MacIsaac was the newest presence in the second tier and coming on fast after starting his company twenty-five years ago, after attending the University of Vermont. MacIsaac had taken on a lot of producers and was competing with Bruce for supply in the St. Aurelie region of Maine and in Vermont. MacIsaac enjoyed working in the woods, and one afternoon in November he went out on a four-wheeler with a chainsaw to cut a tree. As it fell, the trunk bounced back into his chest. Though he tried, he didn’t make it out of the woods. “They lost their fearless leader,” Bruce said, and though the employees promised to continue as before, the future of Highland was in question.
    A few days after the funeral Bruce was in the store when a young man, about twenty years old, came in with his parents. He had started sugaring the year before, putting in 175taps. Now he was thinking about getting involved in a more serious way. They asked a lot of questions.
    “How many gallons of syrup can you make with a cord of firewood?” the young man’s father asked. A cord of firewood is a stack of wood eight feet long, four feet high, and four feet wide.
    “About thirteen to twenty-five gallons, depending on the kind of wood you use,” Bruce said. “There can be a lot of variation, depending on whether you use dry hardwood or softwood like pine, or mixed wood, or the trashwood you cut when pruning an orchard. There was a sugarhouse in Vermont that used dry hardwood that was two years old. It takes two