We were lucky to catch up with Caitlin & Ian Ackermann recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Caitlin & Ian, appreciate you sitting with us today. Maybe we can start with a topic that we care deeply about because it’s something we’ve found really sets folks apart and can make all the difference in whether someone reaches their goals. Self discipline seems to have an outsized impact on how someone’s life plays out and so we’d love to hear about how you developed yours?
One of the biggest things I hear from people who aren’t self-employed is that they could never have the self-discipline to make themselves work, and that they need someone to tell them when to work and what to do. Thankfully we’ve never had that problem. In fact, our problem is often working TOO much, and not knowing when to put work away. The motivation to work hard often comes from wanting to pay down our land debt from the loans we took out to buy our 150 acres. Having a large amount of debt is a looming feeling, so the urge to not feel that financial stress all of the time is a big motivator to work hard. Since having kids we’ve been dedicated to taking 1 to 2 roadtrips a year and taking the weekends off. We’ve come to realize that you can’t work your life away, and that someday we’ll want these years back.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
We make maple syrup for a living! While my grandparents’ made maple syrup back in the day, neither of us grew up doing it. When Ian and I first met when I was 17 and he was 22, we had a lot of dreams about working for ourselves and having an exciting life. We both had a sense of adventure and wanted to experience new things that our little hometown couldn’t give us. We bought our first piece of land when I was 20 and Ian was 25, and made our first batch of maple syrup in the spring of 2013. We had a desire to work off the land and a desire to travel, and maple syrup, being seasonal agriculture, was the perfect solution. We make maple syrup in the spring, but don’t need to be constantly tied down to the farm like with livestock. Because there’s so much maple syrup in Vermont we started driving 3.5 hours to Boston, MA to attend farmers’ markets and live in a camper. When we found out that farmers’ markets were a good way to make a living, we expanded our reach to doing Florida farmers’ markets as well. We officially became snow birds at 25 and 30 years old, coming down to work in the sun and escape the frigid north for 2.5 months every year.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
1. Don’t be afraid to take chances and think outside the box. We have tried many things that have failed miserably, but we never feel bad about them. If we didn’t fail sometimes, we’d never be where we are today. Every experience has an important lesson.
2. Get yourself out there! The reason we are where we are today is because we did thousands of farmers’ markets over the years, met people along the way that put our syrup in articles (like this one!), and gifted our products to their friends and family. You never know when an opportunity will present itself when you’re out in the world.
3. Never believe that you know it all, and never stop learning. There are always people who have new ideas and different ways of doing things. Especially with sugaring, there is new equipment being invented and new studies happening every year. You never know when you’ll learn something that’ll change the way you operate your business forever!
What’s been one of your main areas of growth this year?
Diversifying with different businesses has always been important to us. When you’re a small business that depends on the weather like with maple syrup, you don’t want all of your eggs in one basket. Maple syrup needs to have weather that’s freezing at night and thawing during the day, and last year our already short sugaring season was cut even shorter with a stretch of 70 and 80 degree days in April. We always wonder if we’re building all of this just to have the weather warm up too much and in the end have nothing to hand down to our kids. In 2023 we diversified by buying 2 firewood businesses, so if we have a bad maple year we can still get by by selling firewood. We buy log-length wood from loggers in our area, and then split around 1,000 cords for households to use in the winter to keep warm.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ackermannmaplefarm.com/
- Instagram: @ackermannmaplefarm
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ackermannmaplefarm
- Other: TikTok – @ackermannmaplefarm
