Sugar House Yantra

  Directed by: Jared Flesher Released: 2024 (educational) Year of Production: 2023 Running Time: 32 min Language: English Subtitle Options: English Closed Captions Subjects: Gender and Sexuality Studies                 Smoke rises from the metal chimney of a pine-clad sugar house. Inside, farmer Charlize Katzenbach tends the fire that transforms maple sap into maple syrup. This is a story about how things change. When Charlize started tapping maple trees 35 years ago, she appeared to the world as a different person with a different name. In those days she worked as a construction worker, then a shop teacher, then a home builder. “I learned to accept what I had, which was being a male,” she says. Only when she reached her seventh decade did she find it possible to express her true identity as a transgender woman. In retirement, Charlize’s work is now on her farm, Sweet Sourland, tucked away in a still quiet corner of New Jersey. Here, in addition to producing syrup and rai