BITTERSWEET SEASON FOR THE GILLILAN FAMILY

Beautiful, Beautiful week up here in Northern Vermont.

Great Article and Slideshow in today's Burlington Free Press:

There is a great slide show of the Gillilan Clan Sugaring up in Fletcher with some beautiful photos by Glen Russell of The Burlington Free Press. Bruce Gillilan, as most of you probably know is the son of Meredith (Machia) Gillilan and the late Cleon Gillilan. Cleon died in a tragic accident a short time ago. Bruce is married to Mary Jo (Pigeon) Gillilan, daughter of Grace (Ferguson) Pigeon and the late Leo Pigeon.

When you click on the following link, if you go up to view at the top of your browser and click on full screen, you can see the full picture better. Click on the following link to view the slideshow:

The original link to the slideshow is no longer available on the Burlington Free Press Web Site, however, I did clip the photos and comments under them, thank God!!

http://www.vtgrandpa.com/newsclips/gillilan_060329.html

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/legacy/sugaring.htm

Below is the article which can also be seen on the Burlington Free Press Web Site:

Bittersweet season

By Erica Jacobson
Free Press Staff Writer

March 29, 2006

FLETCHER -- A blue Ford 2110 tractor slogged through the woods, towing a homemade, 200-gallon sap gathering tank on the bumpy and gooey path to the Gillilan family's hilltop sugarhouse. Steam seeped through the seams in the metal roof on a sugarhouse the family has used for four generations.

This sugaring season is one of somber firsts.

In August, the family patriarch, 83-year-old Cleon Gillilan, was cutting trees in his sugarbush when he was struck by a falling tree. He died several days later.

Bruce Gillilan, Cleon Gillilan's son, said he feels the loss of his father in small ways almost every day.

Sap buckets Cleon normally would have hung in a neighbor's sugarbush by now still sit in stacks just inside the sugarhouse door. Between his daytime job and boiling, Bruce Gillilan said, there just hasn't been time to tap those trees this year. And the hours Bruce Gillilan used to spend in the sugarhouse with his father, talking about sugaring or just sitting in shared silence, are gone.

"It's time I got to spend with my dad that I wouldn't get otherwise," Bruce Gillilan said. "The first night I boiled, I boiled myself.

"It was different. It was kind of tough."

Although Cleon Gillilan told his son the family had sugared on their property as early as 1906, it was 1972 when he and Bruce Gillilan resurrected the sugarbush and started making syrup again.

Cleon troubleshot nearly everything in the operation. He installed a grab handle on the sap gathering tank to help wagon passengers weather the jouncing ride behind the tractor, and he notched a stick to show how much syrup remained in the feeder tank outside the sugarhouse.

Cleon Gillilan became the first of three generations to work for Leader Evaporator in Swanton. He also helped run maple festivals and booths at fairs, and the family's syrup has since won enough blue ribbons and other awards to line several walls of a syrup packing room in the garage Cleon built.

Once Bruce's son, Brad Gillilan, grew old enough to work during sugaring season, Cleon Gillilan handed boiling duties to Bruce and taught Brad how to work the sugarbush.

"It was his time to go with the grandkids," Bruce Gillilan said.

Saturday afternoon, 25-year-old Brad Gillilan tended to the evaporator as Bruce Gillilan brought load after load of sap from the vacuum pump shed down the hill.

Brad Gillilan fed the fire with some of the last firewood his grandfather had cut. He monitored the temperature of the sap, poured freshly drawn sap through a filter and swept the sugarhouse floor clean of wood scraps before he started the cycle all over again.

"Usually, when I got home from school, there'd be a note on the door to tell me where he was in the woods," Brad Gillilan said of working with his grandfather during sugaring season. "And I'd have to go find him from there."

Luckily, his grandfather fired up the blue Ford tractor frequently enough that he could pinpoint his location in the woods. Cleon Gillilan eventually taught him everything he needed to know about boiling sap, Brad Gillilan said, and even helped him log the woods for three years to help pay his way through Vermont Technical College. When Brad Gillilan and his wife, Carey, learned she was pregnant with a boy last year, Brad said the couple immediately knew his middle name would be Cleon.

Gavin Cleon Gillilan was born in mid-August. In the two short weeks before Cleon Gillilan died, he taught his great-grandson about some of the finer things in life. When the baby fussed about taking formula, Cleon Gillilan added a few drops of the family's finest to the bottle, said Mary Jo Gillilan, Bruce's wife and Gavin's grandmother.

"To this day, that's how he takes his milk," she said, "with a little bit of maple syrup."

Gavin, now a big, blue-eyed 7-month-old, watched his father and grandfather work in the sugarhouse Saturday afternoon.

Bruce Gillilan offered the boy a sip of fresh, warm syrup, and the baby wiggled his arms in excitement. Some day soon, Bruce Gillilan said, Gavin might live within the shadow of the family's sugarhouse. Cleon Gillilan had staked out a parcel of land where Brad Gillilan could build a home for his family. Cleon was working on that plot Aug. 22 when a dead tree he had cut for firewood fell and hit him.

"It was for sugaring wood," Bruce Gillilan said, "but he had another purpose in it."

Contact Erica Jacobson at 660-1843 or

ejacobso@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com