Selling Sweetness to Help Find a Cure for Juvenile Diabetes

For several years now, Dan Roulier has tapped nearly 1,000 trees on his Somers property to create 200 gallons of pure maple syrup each spring. 

The process is time consuming, can be physically demanding and requires an intense attention to detail during the sugaring season. Roulier doesn't mind, though. He not only loves the process and being outdoors, he enjoys the nearly decade old tradition of making the syrup at his Worthington Pond Farm property so that he can donate the proceeds from the sales to charities that are close to his heart. 

This year is no different. 

An 8 1/2 inch by 11 inch single sheet of white paper tacked inside a small wooden shack on South Road (Route 83) announced last week that every 8.45 ounce bottle of syrup housed within cost $10, with the proceeds to be donated to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Last year, Roulier, who is a well-known residential builder in the region and who owns Dan Roulier & Associates, said that he tripled his investment and donated it to the American Red Cross. 

"I like to be outside, and I like having something to do," Roulier said Thursday by phone.   This year, he has help. 

His daughter Hallie Roulier Fox and her family are assisting in the syrup-making process, to a point, and are charged with selling the bottles to benefit the foundation. It is no coincidence as to why the family chose donate the money toward research to cure juvenile diabetes. 

"In August my daughter Ava, who was 6 at time, was diagnosed with type 1 juvenile diabetes," Roulier Fox said Thursday. "We just really want to find a cure because I can't fathom her living the rest of her live with this disease."

Ava, now 7 years old, is an active participant in the planning and execution of the syrup making process and marketing events. She started out small with her siblings, setting up a stand at the end of her East Longmeadow, MA., home driveway. The family then took the operation to locations with greater visibility: the parking area of their local congregational church and the small covered stand outside her grandfather's South Road office in Somers. 

Their goal is to raise $10,000 for the foundation and they're nearly one-third of the way there. They hope that a sale planned for April 14 at the East Longmeadow Congregational Church will push them closer to their goal. 

Roulier Fox said it was important to her father that the children become involved in the process and are not just given the product to raise money. He wants them to be invested in its creation, to know from where the sap flows and how it’s turned into golden and sweet, 100-percent pure Connecticut maple syrup.   

Roulier said that he knows that his grandchildren’s ages limit their capabilities, they range in age from 5 years to 10 years, but that he wants to help instill in them a sense of accomplishment, community pride and charity, and he wants them to have fun.   

And the family wants to help raise money to pay for scientific research to help children like their Ava. 

To purchase a bottle of the Worthington Pond Farm, LLC, syrup, bring $10 in cash to the shack on South Road (Route 83), deposit it into one of the buckets and retrieve your syrup. Remember, it's the honest system with the money going to charity. An alternative is to donate directly to the research foundation through her fundraising page the Juvenile Diabetes page and forgo the syrup.