The Vermonter candy business was born in 1950. My father had recently become unemployed. Then my mother, Barbara, found out she was pregnant with their first child (me). Hed been selling candy in southwestern Vermont, near Manchester, for a restaurant owner who made candy during the slow winter season. After they made the candy, my dad, Herb Stick Handy, would take it on the road and sell it wherever he could. Eventually, he established a route of steady customers. But in spring 1950, the restaurant business picked up again, so candy production was halted. As my mother recalls, Your father was livid. He had all these customers and no candy to sell. After talking to his father, H.L. Handy Sr., who had once run a meat business in Springfield, Massachusetts, he quit his job in the restaurant. The two rented a storage room behind a grocery store in Dorset, Vermont to make their own candy. They started searching for equipment. Maple syrup was added to the recipe, they decided on the name, The Vermonter, and they had a box designed. A registered nurse, my mother continued to work as a visiting nurse during her pregnancy to provide income while my dad and grandfather were getting the tools of the business together. The first box of maple peanut brittle was sold in summer of 1950. I was born in December 1950. The business took off. In Spring 1952, my parents moved out of their little apartment and bought a home in Putney, in southeastern Vermont. Candy production took place in a large room adjacent to our home. All the cooking, processing, packaging and storing of the candy and supplies happened in one large room. Here is how our family looked in 1952. In January 1954, my brother, Dave was born. My mother helped with the candy manufacturing less and less during the day. After the workers went home, she swept, cleaned up, and washed the dirty aprons and gloves in our old two-tub electric washer with wringer. In the late 50s, my mother stopped working in the candy shop altogether and my parents were headed for divorce. Growing up, Dave and I worked in the Candy Shop during summer vacations. After we turned 16, we helped deliver the candy to gift shops, inns and country stores in New England and New York state. Here is Dave with my dad in the early 90s. In 1979, my father remarried to a woman from Brazil. Over the years, many other family members pitched in to help make our brittles - including my fathers sister, Gretchen, my brother, Dave, and my son Hannibal. Until he died of cancer in 1996, my father ran the business with his new wife, Jandira. In 2004, she returned to Brazil after turning over the business back to the Handys. Now I operate the wholesale candy business in Putney, with some help from my son and brother.

Website: http://www.deluxemaplebrittles.com/