Steve Rascher – The Man That Maple Made

Story and photos by David DeLozier

As the sun approaches its vernal equinox, daylight wins the fight over darkness.  Despite the joy that warmth and sunshine bring with the Spring Season, it also brings a strange affliction to some people in the Upper Hudson Valley.  No, it’s not Spring Fever, but Maple Madness.  The cool nights and warming days awaken the trees in the great Northern Forests, and a sweet sap begins to rise in the mighty sugar maple.  This perennial ritual calls men out to the woods to capture the nectar in a labyrinth of taps, tubes and tanks, spending sleepless nights in a hot, steamy shack boiling their precious liquid down into the world renowned maple syrup.

In some cases, the affliction known as maple madness can become an obsession and no maple man is more obsessed than Staffan “Steve” Rascher, of Shushan, NY.  Rascher has been making maple syrup for most of his 71 years on this earth.  In fact, his first batch was made when he was a young lad of just five years old.  He still has the sketch he made for his ‘show and tell” class, mounted on a wall in his sugarhouse.

“I got some of the old fashioned steel buckets and tapped some trees in the side yard,” recalls Rascher.   “Then I gathered up the buckets full of sap, put the sap into a large pan, made a big fire underneath it, and there’s smoke and ashes billowing out all over the place and into the pan, and I boiled it down and made maple syrup.” Little did the young boy realize at the time that his parent’s homestead would become the source for the World’s Best Maple Syrup!

Turns out the Rascher homestead is situated on what is perhaps the perfect landscape for a maple sugar operation.  The 400 acre property straddles a narrow valley along the New York-Vermont border, covered with a mature forest of oak, ash and maple.  A small farm stead was cut out of the forest, and this was the land that was to make and shape Steve Rascher.

The Rascher family emigrated from Sweden to the United States in 1941, fleeing the advance of Hitler’s Third Reich into Scandinavia.  While staying with their host family in New York City, German Spys were captured after landing on a Long Island Beach.  Afraid of a German advance into New York City, the elder Sigurd Rascher went in search of a place far away from cities and potential strife.  He made contact with a land broker from Arlington, Vermont, who had several parcels of interest.  Sigurd would get out of the truck at each stop, grab his shovel, and dig a hole.  The first two sites in Vermont were rejected because of gravely soil.  The broker had only one other choice, just over the border in New York.  The shovel blade sank deep into the soil without resistance.  The hole got bigger; all that was there was a beautiful loam.  Without hesitation, Sigurd bought the property, knowing that he could feed his family with the rich soil in this valley.

Already a prominent saxophone player of world renown, Sigurd Rascher quickly made a name for himself in music circles with his unique style of play.   His big break came when he was chosen to play in the USO band that toured with Bob Hope during World War II.  Farming was not his strong trait, but it would be where young Staffan would stake his claim and name. 

His father may have traveled the world, but the only world Steve was interested in was the land at his doorstep.  In 1971, he put down his own roots amongst the trees he loves, by building a log home just down the street from the family homestead.  This house was built just like his ancestors from Sweden would have built a home – by hand. Whole logs were acquired from a logging operation in Chester VT.  Two tractor trailer loads full.  Everything was hand peeled with a draw knife and hand sawed with his trusty chainsaw.  “I still use the same chainsaw everyday that I built this house with,” Steve says with pride.  All joints were hand carved, and secured with long spikes.  “There’s about 600 pounds of 18” spikes in this house,” he said  All the window frames had to be custom made, because, at the time, there were none built that  were large enough for the width of the logs.  “Everything in this house was handmade, nothing was bought from a factory” he said. “There’s no finish on these logs, it’s all natural.  Finishes off gas, and you end up breathing that stuff.  So I never put a finish on them.” 

Steve had no formal training in construction.  “I trained myself,” said Steve.  “I come from northern Sweden where there are log cabins like this that are thousands of years old.  They’re all pretty much built like this one.”

From this idyllic setting, Steve Rascher learned to love the woods and his trees.  “I was a treehugger before guys like you were even born,” he said with a smirk.  “If you love your trees, they’ll love you back!”  Through the years, Rascher has nurtured his trees, and in particular, his maples, to become a highly productive sugar bush.  The forest is much like a park, with an open floor and large, majestic trees towering skyward.  He has built a network of tubes throughout the woods, taking advantage of the natural sloping topography so that all the sap freely flows by gravity to a tank position across the road from his sugarhouse.  His meticulous care of the system and care of the forest biome deliver a steady supply of liquid gold every Spring.

Rascher is a stickler for quality and the numerous awards and ribbons decorating the walls of the sugarhouse are testimony to that.  “I’ve got a whole drawer full of ribbons from competitions through the years,” he boasted.  “I’d won the International Award for Maple Syrup in 1997 and was awarded a special blanket – like the ones that the winners at Saratoga horse track get,” he said with pride. “I’ve won it ever since, but they no longer give away the blanket.”  As holder of the coveted title “World’s Best Maple Syrup, Rascher has what many other maple men want.  But he keeps winning, year after year. 

“I’ve been teaching people how to make maple sugar for 50 years now,” Steve explains.  “A few years back I had an international maple tour here, for a demonstration.  It was the summer time, but I still had to show them how I do it.  Since I had no sap, I filled the evaporator with distilled water and added a gallon of maple syrup, and then boiled it all out again so they all could see how it was done.”

In 1997 Rascher’s original sugarhouse was lost to an arsonist rampage.  The sugar house was one of about six other structures in the County that were torched, all in one night.   “I’ve been on the fire department here locally for 38 years or so, and let me tell you there’s nothing sadder than seeing your own pride and joy go up in flames,” said Steve.  The arsonist apparently was having problems at home.  “Well, he’s got a nice new home now, over at the State Prison.”

Undeterred, Rasher rebuilt the sugarhouse on the exact spot as the old one, but even better.  He had an evaporator built to his specifications by Tom and Bill at the Grimm Corporation of Rutland VT.  Like Rascher himself, it is an original; there’s none like it anywhere else.

An opportunity came for others to grab the top maple syrup honors when Rasher fell ill a couple of years ago to a run in with Lyme Disease.  He was down, but not out.  Last year, while recovering from his serious illness, he was only able to make maple syrup from one tree, in his front yard. He took some samples of this small batch down to the International Competition in Bennington, Vermont, and to the amazement of all attendees, he swept the awards. “The Rash is back!” declared one of the attendees.  “I got the blue ribbon for every single class!” Steve said.  “And, I was the class winner for Light Amber, which is the most difficult class to win”

With a new lease on life, Rasher is taking on his maple operation with renewed gusto.  He’s been busy installing all new sap lines into the sugar bush – a Herculean task for someone in top shape, let alone a Lyme Disease survivor.  But Steve is committed to quality, and he felt that the old lines had to go.  “The doctor said I should keep busy with work to stay healthy.  I told him, don’t worry about that one,” he laughed.  

Rascher’s next ambition is to get his syrup certified by Northeast Organic Farmers Association (NOFA).  It’s a very stringent classification that requires absolute purity. Rasher is confident that he’ll pass with ease - he owns the property on both sides of the road, all the way to the ridge tops. “There are no contaminants in this valley,” he point out.  “Everything I do here is natural.  It’s just me, the maples, and God’s hand over mine.”  The trees are just returning the favor of a lifetime of care. It is a love affair, for the man that maple made.  

For more information, contact Rascher's Sugar House
347 Perry Hill Road, Town of Salem 518-854-3770
Features an owner-designed 5x12 wood-fired stainless steel evaporator. Won "Worlds Best Maple Syrup" and New York State Legislature Recognition. Open year round by appointment. Tours during maple season.