Sugar House Yantra

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 raising sheep, she pursues a lifelong passion for creating art. Her specialty is colorful geometric designs painted on unusual canvases such as glass and wood. Meditative pieces that inspire introspection.

“I am finding a certain peace and contentment with life that I never thought possible,” she says.

Sugar House Yantra contemplates rural farming, art, aging, and transgender identity. Charlize’s story reminds us that sweet things take time.