Who They Are
Fulton’s Pancake House & Sugar Bush
Shirley Deugo, family and staff
#291 6th Concession Road, RR#1, Pakenham, ON
K0A 2X0
(613) 256-3867
www.fultons.ca email: info@fultons.ca
What & Where They Sell
100% pure maple syrup and maple candy, a wide variety of gourmet maple products (butters, sugars, fudge, salsa, mustard, teas, jams, sauces & more). All items can be purchased online at <www.fultons.ca> or from their on-site Maple Shoppe.
Family Trees
According to Shirley Deugo, the first Fultons to arrive in this area journeyed from Scotland in the 1840’s and wound up in Lanark County where it “looked like home” Shirley, herself a fourth-generation Fulton, relates the family joke that “if they had only walked a bit farther, they would have found some soil…” But among the rocks and trees of the challenging Canadian landscape were stands of maple trees — offering up a sweet and potentially lucrative spring crop.
The settlers learned to make maple sugar from the aboriginals in the area, and those skills eventually allowed them to produce the maple syrup for which Lanark County is now famous. In the early days maple was a much-anticipated sweet staple when the only alternative was honey (if you knew where to find it). During the harsh winters and springs it also offered the benefits of calories for keeping warm and vitamins for warding off disease. But it was also important as an early crop: as the first source of income for farmers after a prolonged non-growing period, maple often provided the cash with which they purchased spring seeds. Crops and cash aside, though, for families with sugar bushes the running of the sap was — and still is — a cause for celebration after a long cold winter. Generations after her ancestors arrived, Shirley still gets a “feeling of excitement in my stomach” on the first bright day in late winter when the sun is strong enough to make its warmth felt, and she inevitably heads out to the woods in anticipation of the season to come.
A Family Tradition
In the early days Fulton’s maple products were enjoyed solely by family and friends. Shirley’s great-grandfather was the first to begin making a little extra and selling it out of a settling can to neighbours. Two generations later, Shirley’s father Leonard and uncle Johnny (AKA “The Fulton Brothers”) added more taps and began shipping maple syrup out west from the Pakenham train station. Shirley remembers joining the family business in her early years — she had the important job of pasting paper labels onto the 4-litre tin cans that were shipped across the country. In 1969 the family decided to focus on retail rather than wholesale, and they built the first pancake house on their property. Back then, Fulton’s opened only on weekends and “on days when the sap was running”, until Shirley’s dad realized that city folks didn’t necessarily know when that phenomenon occurred.
Reaching the “city folks” has certainly been one of the main goals of Fulton’s Pancake House. Shirley’s love for her family’s 400-acre property is crystal clear; so is her desire to foster a similar appreciation in visitors from all backgrounds. She credits her nursing training for teaching her about reaching out to people. As she puts it, “business training is all about business, but nursing is all about people — and it turns out that business is all about people!” And although they have added “attractions” like sleigh-rides, play structures and face painting over the years, Shirley still feels that the greatest attraction at Fulton’s is the beautiful forested land itself. She worries that each generation of people living in towns and cities gets a bit more removed from the benefits of nature, and says, somewhat wistfully, “I would just like for people to come and experience what a forest can do for them.”
Shirley has seen the family business grow steadily and sustainably over her lifetime. Back in 1971 she married George Deugo and moved to Arnprior, but she continued to make pies for the pancake house and remembers always being drawn back to the sugar bush in the spring. In 1980 she and George moved back to the property and took over the farm (at that time they still had cattle, and George was running his own plumbing business). Over the years they added a gift shop, office space and bathrooms to the business, and increased the number of taps to 6500. George focused primarily on the construction and maintenance as well as the maple production, and Shirley concentrated on the staff and visitors —she jokes that he was the “outside boss” and she was the “inside boss”.
Looking at the Long-Term
Ten years ago, the ice storm that swept across this area had a devastating effect on the mature maple trees that are crucial to the maple syrup industry. In order to assess the effects and prevent further damage, Fulton’s immediately began under-tapping to give the trees a chance to recover. The business certainly took a hit in the short-term, but Shirley’s outlook on the enduring repercussions of the storm is farsighted. “It’s not like planting corn in the spring and harvesting in the fall. When you manage a forest it’s long-term and you’re very much stewards of the land. We’ve always been aware that what we’re doing now is going to impact our kids and our grand-kids.” She explains that from a multi-generational viewpoint the ice storm was beneficial to the forest — culling the weaker and older trees, letting in more sunlight and promoting the growth of younger trees, “which my grand-kids will tap one day.”
Interestingly, the ice storm was also responsible for new growth within the business itself. “After the storm, the family sat down and tried to figure out how to stretch the limited amount of syrup we had that season,” explains Shirley. This creative process led them to develop gourmet products like blueberry and raspberry maple syrup, maple mustard and jams and maple-chocolate sauce. They also developed more ways to add value to visits to the sugar bush through experiences such as making taffy and maple cotton candy, going on sleigh rides, and meeting the Easter Bunny. Fulton’s has also extended the use of their property from the nine-week maple season to a year-round destination for groups looking for educational or team-building experiences. They welcome schools, international visitors and businesses alike and offer team-building activities from low-ropes courses and walks in the woods to maple culinary experiences and magicians. Shirley is always delighted (but not surprised) to see the change that even one day in the woods can effect in people.
Like many farmers, Shirley expresses frustration over government regulations, made without adequate consultation or understanding, that she feels could “easily sweep smaller or even mid-size sugar bushes out of business.” She has personally seen some of the smaller, older maple producers in the area give up entirely, and is worried that newer producers are getting frustrated because every year there seems to be a new hurdle. As someone whose family has been farming on the same land for generations, Shirley “really wants to see farming be a viable way to make a living — not just a labour of love — that is supported by the wider non-farming community.”
Fortunately for all of us, she definitely sees Fulton’s staying in her family for generations to come. Although the family is mourning the loss of George Deugo who passed away last fall, Shirley describes their son Scott as being “passionate about the farm” (he’s the maple producer now, in addition to holding down a full-time job as a fire-fighter). She also has faith that her six grandsons and two granddaughters will find a similar sense of fulfillment in continuing to be stewards of the Fulton family trees.