Every spring for more than a century, tapping maples and producing syrup has been a way of life in northern Somerset County. But thanks to the Enron debacle, this whole lifestyle and a major industry are in jeopardy.

Members of the Lariviere family have packed up and headed deep into the woods of Big Six Township, one of the most northern territories in Somerset County, where more than 90 percent of Maine’s maple syrup is produced.

Although Maine has about 300 syrup producers, the lion’s share of the product is made in the deep woods along the northern border with Quebec.

A long dirt road winds through the hardwoods, decorated with the bright blue, yellow and white tubing that signifies these are sugar maples. A burst of light up ahead reveals a clearing filled with camps, summer-style cottages that surround a bright-white building, roofed and trimmed in brilliant red.

But the sugaring process in this serene setting is in serious jeopardy. Nearly 30 of the 51 camps are on leased land – land that is now up for sale.

Bob Smith of Skowhegan, former president of the Maine Maple Producers Association, said Monday that 28 of the 51 leases run out the last day of April. “There has been no word about renewals,” he said. If the leases are not renewed, the sugar makers will have 30 days to remove their equipment, taps and buildings.

“I have $200,000 invested up there,” said Smith.

The problem, he said, goes back to Enron. Sixty thousand acres of prime northern sugar-making woods formerly were owned by Enron, and the land

and a lumber mill in Quebec were managed by St. Aurelie Timberlands, a Canadian-owned company. But when Enron went through bankruptcy, Peter M. Brant of Greenwich, Conn., bought the land and has put it up for sale.

But while visiting on a recent spring day, the Enron disaster seemed far, far away. The air pulsed with the sound of generators and the roar of the sugar-making fires. Four chimneys on the sugarhouse blew thick steam into the cool air.

This is the Lariviere Sugar Camp, an operation that annually produces the most maple syrup in the state of Maine. It is one of 51 similar camps in the northern Somerset County woods. The camps are strung along Maine’s northern border, where the sugar maples grow thick and the warm days and cool nights of spring force the sap to pour.

For four to five weeks every spring, the camps come alive as family members reunite and boil sap into syrup almost 24 hours a day.

In syrup making, a machine uses high pressure to remove 75 percent of the water from sap. It forces aside the water with the least sugar concentration.

The remaining product is boiled, leaving the highly sugared syrup.

The Maine Maple Producers and a private investor attempted to purchase the property and save their businesses, offering $15,000 for the 60,000 acres, but the offer was turned down, said Smith. “We still hope that we can deal with the land company and are working on lease renewals.”

“Meanwhile, we’ll continue to do what we do: make syrup,” said Fabien Lariviere, whose family-run syrup business is on land owned by three different landowners.

Although the Lariviere operation is family-run, its scale is staggering.

More than 4,000 gallons of sap an hour course through tubing that is webbed through a 3-mile circle. More than 50,000 trees feed the nearly clear juice into seven pump houses by way of miles of thick plastic tubing that resembles utility cables as the sap is brought to the sugarhouse.

Once the sap starts running, work continues 24 hours a day. The Lariviere brothers, Fabien, 39, Martin, 47, and Pierre, 48, along with Martin’s wife, Sylvie, and longtime employee Julian Bolduc, stop only to eat. They sleep in shifts, though sleep comes only when the flow of sap slows and is grabbed in three-hour naps.

Although the family members all live within 25 miles of the camp in Canada, their syrup is made in Maine and their loyalty is clear: a Maine state flag decorates one wall of the sugarhouse, along with a poster that reads: “There’s nature’s gold in Maine.”

On a recent visit to the sugar camp, visitors were welcomed by the sweet scent of boiling sap as steam from the sugarhouse filled the misty air. The sap, a thin, nearly clear liquid, arrives at 6 percent sugar and is boiled until the rich, buttery brown color is revealed and the sugar content rises to 66 percent. Martin said that 75 percent of the water in the syrup is removed through a reverse osmosis process and the final 25 percent is then boiled off.

“Weather and the timeliness of the boiling affect the color,” said Martin, and those factors affect the price. There is a 45-cent difference per pound between the light (most clear) and amber (darkest) grades.

Explaining the process with thick French-Canadian accents, the brothers translate for their father, Marc, 73, who visits the camp on weekends and oversees the packaging operations.

Marc explains that his wife, Helene’s, grandfather Napoleon Lariviere began making syrup in the early 1900s. The business was purchased by a cousin – Marc’s father – in 1915, and was passed on to Marc in 1955.

Fifty years ago, Marc said, horses were used to gather the syrup, still being collected in buckets on the trees. The evaporator used to boil the sap was wood-fired. The brothers remember those days well. “On Friday, after school, I would walk the 21/2 miles into sugar camp,” said Fabien. “It was the only place I wanted to be.” The brothers all started working full time in the camp at 16.

Fabien said the family used to dig a pit about 5 feet deep and line it with a tarp. “That was our storage,” he said. The sap would be pumped by hand into the wood-fired evaporator.

By the 1980s, tremendous technological advancements were revolutionizing the maple syrup industry, and, Marc said, change and growth came to the remote camp. Tubing, strung for miles in a web through the woods, is used now instead of buckets, and both evaporators in the sugarhouse are oil-fired. “We used to burn 225 cords of wood a season,” said Marc in French. “Now we use 1,025 gallons of fuel each day, 56 gallons an hour.”

The Maine saying, “You can’t get there from here,” truly applies to the northern Somerset County sugarbush. All roads in come from Canada.

To travel from camp to their production and distribution office in Madison, the Lariviere family must traverse 3 miles of dirt road, drive through a remote border crossing at St. Aurelie and then drive another 20 miles west before hitting U.S. Route 201, Route 173 in Canada. It’s a straight shot from there across the Jackman border crossing and over to Madison, where the corporate offices of Maine Maple Products is located.

The Lariviere brothers were making 30 gallons of pure maple syrup an hour last week, packaging it in 30- and 38-gallon drums. When the sap is running well, one of the camp’s 4,000-gallon storage tanks can be filled in one hour.

“If you don’t like this, you don’t do it,” Fabien said with a shrug. “It is hard work with long hours. You can compare it to farming with the same pay.”

There is no time for sport or fun, said Fabien. “The best part of camp is the meal at noon and the shower in the evening,” he joked. “When we stop, we sleep.”

The small, comfortable camps are inviting. The noon meal is taken in Martin’s camp, where a television and Nintendo grace one wall, and a long dining table dominates the space. The couple sleeps in an upstairs loft and a full kitchen is kept well stocked. The camp is not insulated but is kept warm with a wood stove and two backup electric heaters.

Fabien’s dog, Jack, keeps watch on the porch for leftovers while the family shuffles in and out in shifts for dinner. As the first two brothers finish eating and return to the evaporator, Sylvie quickly sets the table for the next two.

When sugaring season is over, life takes on a slower, easier pace, said Martin. Leisurely walks through the woods enable the brothers to check the miles of tubing for damage – moose sometimes walk through the webbing and squirrels often chew through the thick plastic.

Early in the year, around the end of January, the trees are tapped.

After sap season, there is also the packaging and marketing aspect of the business. The Lariviere family, as Maine Maple Products, is one of the few Maine maple producers that is getting value-added prices for its product.

Looking at the hundreds of metal drums of syrup surrounding the sugar camp, Martin explained, “The value is not in the raw product. The value is in what happens to that syrup.”

Capped and rolled out of the sugarhouse, a 30-gallon drum of pure maple syrup is worth $28, less than $1 a gallon. But once the syrup is packaged in a gallon container, MMP can charge $38 each. The company also packages its product in stylish bottles, log cabin tins and sells jams, jellies, honey, maple cream and maple candy.

Sleeves rolled up, working in the sugarhouse, Martin said he hoped there was a future for his family’s business. “If a paper company buys it, they will cut down all the trees,” said Martin. He said another party has expressed interest in the woods to create a park. If that happens, business must leave.

“Right now, we are very insecure to invest any money,” he said, referring to the Enron debacle and the uncertain future of the leases. “It is a very uncertain time.”