Maple sap processing season is short, yet Northfield’s Milt Severance thinks about syrup all year. His sweet vocation will be celebrated this Friday, March 1, when his sugarhouse is singled out to host the Ceremonial Tapping that kicks off Maple Month. Milt’s wife, Robin, said, “It’s a big deal, and involves a lot of people.” Milt added, “Mass Maple chooses a different sugarhouse every year; this year, they chose us.” (Mass Maple is short for the Massachusetts Maple Producers’ Association.)

The public is invited to the Severances’ Pierson Road sugarhouse in Northfield for an open house that will include coffee and doughnuts at 9 a.m. followed by a 10 a.m. ceremony. A Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources official will read a gubernatorial proclamation, and attendees can meet the Severances, as well as Mass Maple President Keith Bardwell, and avail themselves of delicious products.

The sugarhouse sits on property where Milt grew up, within shouting distance of both New Hampshire and Vermont. In 1976, when Milt was 18, “a buddy of mine who’d boiled sap with his grandfather suggested we make syrup in a kettle over an open fire. We produced a couple of gallons,” said Milt. “Now, I make a couple thousand gallons a year.”

Robin Severance has seen her husband persevere: “For years, Milt used both (sap collection) buckets and (food-grade polyethylene) tubing, but since his hip replacement surgery in 2019, it’s all tubing.” You can’t keep a good man down: Milt runs a tri-state operation by boiling and processing in Massachusetts the sap he collects in New Hampshire and Vermont. “You don’t see many young people coming up into the business,” said Robin, to which Milt added: “True, but if they get started, they get bit by the bug, like what happened to me. After those first two gallons, I just wanted more.”

These days, Severance holds steady in terms of quantity, but says, “if there were more trees I could tap, I’d do more. New technology makes it easier.” Sugaring is physically demanding, but Severance has learned to “work smarter, not harder. I used to keep a fire going through the night; now I just work during the day, from 5 in the morning until 9 or 10 at night.” That’s right, dear readers: Milt Severance’s idea of a shorter work day amounts to 16 or 17 hours. And while the time span requiring that schedule is relatively short, Severance doesn’t lay around the house off-season, because sugaring doesn’t really have an off-season. Retail sales happen at fairs, festivals and farmers markets, and in addition to all that, Severance has worked as a crane operator and truck driver for decades.

One of Severance’s tasks include checking tubing lines; he can tell when a vacuum system has a leak, which can happen if a branch falls, or when squirrels or deer disrupt lines. “When I collected sap on a farmer’s land, sometimes I’d find that cows had damaged lines, too.” This evoked memories of my family’s dairy farm in Québec: well-mannered cows become naughty in the face of certain factors; apparently sap tubing is one. (Another is train tracks, but I won’t go there in this column.)

Severance buys loads of pine and hardwood logs, and he and his helpers must split, cut and stack the wood. Meanwhile, the Severances can year-round, and make granulated maple sugar, maple candy and maple cream. Is there anything lovelier than those two words put together: maple and cream? If you’ve never spread some of that magic on toast, you’re in for a treat. “Ours is pure maple,” Milt Severance said with pride.

The topic of what’s on the market that consumers might assume is pure maple — but isn’t — could fill another whole column. Suffice it to say, Severance’s Maple Products are precisely what they claim: 100% pure and guaranteed to make you happier.

Milt Severance is related through marriage to the Gould’s maple dynasty of Shelburne. “Helen, who married Edgar Gould, was my mother’s cousin; she was a Steiner, like my grandmother.” There are more family connections: “Edgar and Helen’s son, Leonard, worked for Davenport’s (C.D. Davenport Trucking and Crane Services), which was owned by my grandfather, Clayton Dennison Davenport.” While in high school, Milt Severance also worked at Davenport’s, driving a truck. Milt’s mom, Alice Davenport Severance, was the company’s first female truck driver. After high school, when Milt would get laid off from Davenport’s seasonal construction and road building concerns, Milt sometimes worked at Gould’s.

Severance comes from a family of hard workers: his mother was an X-ray technician, then later worked at the Northfield Mount Hermon School as an assistant registrar. Milt’s dad, Sonny, was superintendent of grounds for what was then called the Northfield School for Girls. Together, they raised four children; Milt’s brother Steve helps out with Severance’s Maple Products. Milt has built furniture and modular homes, and began working as a crane operator around age 30, a job he continues to this day with a Vermont company.

Another key person in the Severance family enterprise is Robin Severance, who admires her husband’s determination while bringing a great deal of her own to the party. Retail customers and Severance fans see Robin staffing the maple booth at fairs and festivals. In those contexts, people often look at Robin and say, “I know you from somewhere…” That’s because she worked for many years as a receptionist at Greenfield Pediatrics, now known as Greenfield Family Medicine. And since Severances just don’t seem to retire, Robin still works in a number of local medical practices.

Robin Bresnahan Severance grew up in Holyoke; her dad was a painter and wallpaper hanger, her mom a devoted homemaker. When the Bresnahan family moved to Northfield in 1971, Robin remained in Holyoke, living with her grandmother until graduation, and then moved up to Northfield. That led to a lot of commuting as Robin put herself through hairdressing school in West Springfield while simultaneously working at the Greenfield A&P. “I’d get out of school, drive up to Greenfield, work a shift at night, then drive up to Northfield to sleep …and do it all over again the next day.”

Robin and Milt met as neighbors in Northfield and were friends for quite a while before it blossomed into romance. “We gathered sap together and bowled in the same league,” said Robin. The life they’ve made together as parents, grandparents, and now great-grandparents has been filled with hard work, but plenty of joy and funny stories, too, some of which relate to the fact that sugaring season coincides with mud season. “One time, our truck sank in mud,” said Robin. “The men got out to push, putting me in the driver’s seat. They told me to start off slow. I guess I hit the gas a little harder than I meant to.” Both Severances chuckled as Robin finished the story: “Mud flew everywhere … and I mean everywhere.”

Sitting in the Severance’s cozy kitchen on Captain Beers Plain Road, Milt found a photo of their grandson from a few years ago. “Look at this,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye. The image shows a handsome youngster standing in mud halfway to his knees. Apparently the lad said, “I’m stuck! Poppy, get me out!” and Poppy replied, “Hold on, I’ll be right back.” Milt Severance wanted to share the mirth and, years later, the photograph preserves a fond memory. The Severance sense of humor extends to naming their Shih Tzu dogs Maple and Tapper; they’ve also had a series of sugaring-assistant dogs with B-names, the current one being an adorable chocolate labradoodle named Bailey.

Despite such levity, readers who suspect that Milt probably doesn’t take vacations would be correct. “Whenever I’ve gone on vacation,” he said, “something gets screwed up. I’m fine with sticking around.” Robin eventually figured out that “if I’m going to get to the beach, I’d better go with my girlfriends. So we go every year for a few days. It’s a blast.” But does Robin Severance lie around getting a sun tan? Oh, no. She hauls her sewing machine and textile projects to the beach house and revels in a crafty vacation. Robin is a member of the Bernardston Senior Center Quilting Coterie; she and her cohorts pour their creativity into making 40-by-40-inch quilts for children who undergo surgery at Baystate Franklin Medical Center. “We try to do community service projects,” she said. “We meet weekly for companionship, conversation, and lots of laughs!”

It’s become popular to bemoan the 21st century as being an era of indolence and sloth, but a peek into the lives of Milt and Robin Severance reveals that people around here have plenty of get-up-and-go. In western Massachusetts — with our gorgeous maples, intact farmlands, and rolling hills — we’ve got it especially sweet.

Eveline MacDougall is the author of “Fiery Hope,” and a teacher, artist, musician and mom. She comes from a long line of Québecois maple producers. To contact Eveline: eveline@amandlachorus.org.