WEST BRATTLEBORO — How did the Robb Family Farm's maple syrup end up on actress Brooke Shields' holiday gift list in People magazine?
“Dumb luck, I guess,” says Helen Robb, who runs the farm with her husband, Charlie, and her son, Charlie Jr.
In any event, having a celebrity plug their maple syrup in a national magazine with an estimated readership of 46 million people has meant the Robbs are selling a lot of syrup.
Helen said Shields never set foot on her family's farm on Ames Hill Road in West Brattleboro.
“I'm pretty sure I would recognize Brooke if she came to the shop,” she said.
Helen's theory is that someone stopped at the Vermont Country Deli on Western Avenue and picked up a bottle of Robb Farm syrup. Not long after that, an editor from People contacted the Robbs for samples of their maple syrup to be used for a photo spread in a celebrity holiday gift guide.
The Robbs had to keep quiet about it until the gift guide issue was published and on the newsstands last week. Since then, Helen said, close to 100 orders have come in from online shoppers.
Shields is quoted in the magazine as saying “we go through a lot of maple syrup in our house.”
Doing things right
For the Robbs, the national publicity was a nice little reward for taking a big risk. They sold off their dairy herd in 2011 to concentrate on raising beef cattle and upgrading their maple sugaring operation.
The goal, Charlie said, was to get off the milk pricing roller-coaster and come up with a more reliable source of income.
“The bottom line is that we're trying stay here,” he said. “You can always sell maple syrup, and most years, we're sold out by Christmas.”
Today, more than 3,500 taps in their sugarbush produce about 800 gallons of maple syrup each season. Charlie Jr. says he hopes to put up an additional 1,000 to 1,500 taps next season.
And the Robbs are also doing a brisk business selling their pasture-raised beef - free of preservatives, antibiotics, and hormones.
The Robb Farm's former milking parlor is now home to kitchen space where they make maple candy and other maple products. The sugarhouse now has a shop where they sell their maple products, including their own maple cream and maple candy, and lots of their syrup.
A special flavor
Charlie Jr. has run the sugarhouse for more than 20 years, and also makes the maple candy the Robbs sell. He takes pride that his syrup, which comes out of a wood-fired evaporator, has a distinct flavor that larger sugaring operations can't duplicate.
His mother agrees. “With wood, you get the carmelization that gives maple syrup its color and flavor.”
Charlie also points out that larger sugaring operations are geared toward speed and making as much syrup as quickly as possible. “That affects the taste,” he said.
Smaller producers like the Robbs, and the high standards they uphold, are part of the reason Vermont maple syrup is considered the gold standard in the industry.
“When you put your name and address on every bottle and can of syrup, you're telling the customer that you take pride in your product,” Helen said. “That means a lot.”
And she assured her local customers that they still have a couple hundred gallons of syrup left.