From sap to syrup

WEYAUWEGA – It’s a funny story how the Behn family got started making maple syrup.

Doug Behn once kicked around the idea of making maple-flavored moonshine, his son jokes, so he dragged a two-foot-by-two-foot pan out and started boiling sap. Then he found out he didn’t need maple syrup to make moonshine.

Today, that half-joking origin tale has turned into one of central Wisconsin’s busiest small maple syrup operations: hundreds of buckets hanging in leased maple woods, a tractor hauling 275-gallon plastic tanks sloshing with sap, and a wood-fired evaporator sending twin plumes of steam and smoke into the cold air.

From a fourth-generation farm that’s been in the family for 98 years, Doug’s son Anthony, 28, and daughter-in-law Raelyn, 27, now run about 1,100 taps, collect more than 2,000 gallons of sap per day, and still sell most of their syrup the old-fashioned way – from an honor-system stand off Highway 10 on Den-Ed Road in Weyauwega.

“My dad started in 2006. This would be our 20th year producing,” Anthony said, standing among the maples in mid-March. That first year, Doug boiled on a tiny propane rig and made 17 gallons.

Since then, the family has scaled up to a wood-fired evaporator, a reverse osmosis machine and a small army of helpers who hustle through the woods with five-gallon buckets when the sap is running.

Fourth-generation farm
The syrup side of the business grows out of a farm that’s been in the family nearly a century.

“I bought it from my dad when we moved in 2021. My dad bought it from my grandpa,” Anthony said. He and Raelyn have two daughters and are expecting a third child.

The Behn homestead is mostly open ground used for sweet corn, pumpkins and cash crops, with most of the maple trees a few miles away on land leased from a local farmer. In the leased woods, plastic buckets and about 700 taps dot the horizon. Another 30 taps are at the Behn property; the rest come from a handful of folks who bring sap in to be boiled in shares.

“Yesterday we actually set a record for us,” Anthony said. “We collected 2,200 gallons of sap in one day. I went out at 1:30 and didn’t get home until eight.”

Forty gallons to one
Like all maple producers, the Behns work at the mercy of math. A typical tree yields about 43 gallons of sap for every gallon of syrup, though early in the season, sweeter sap can improve that ratio to as low as 27 to one, Anthony explained.

The wood pile behind the sugar shack reflects the effort required: the Behns boil sap in a wood-fired evaporator before finishing it in a propane pan to reach the perfect syrup consistency. To save time, they also use a reverse osmosis unit that concentrates the sap before it hits the pan, effectively doubling the sugar content and cutting hours off the boiling process.

Last year, the Behns bottled 245 gallons of syrup, and this year they’re on track to surpass that total.

Chasing the freeze-thaw
The work is crammed into a short, weather-dependent window.

“Sap season starts when you’re below freezing at night and above freezing during the day,” Anthony said, adding that barometric pressure and storms also play a role. Last weekend’s big snowstorm was expected to shut down the operation through most of this week.

March is the heart of maple syrup season in central Wisconsin. Once the sap starts running, the schedule gets punishing. Help comes from family and friends: his dad Doug, his Waupaca Foundry coworker Matt, his brother-in-law Joe. They all work full time but help out when they can. Payment, for most of them, comes in gallons, not dollars.

From buckets to bottles

Back at the Behn’s Sugar Shack, the sap’s path is precise. Sap concentrated by the reverse osmosis unit feeds into a head tank above the evaporator, preheats, then snakes through baffles until it reaches syrup density.

Syrup is defined by temperature and sugar content. They check each batch with a hydrometer, then run finished syrup through a filter press to polish it. If they can’t bottle right away, they reheat it to keep it safe.

Not all maple syrup looks or tastes the same. Anthony explained that the longer sap sits before cooking, the darker it becomes.

“The darker syrup is a more robust maple syrup,” he said.

The Behns also make granulated maple sugar and they’ve added a bourbon barrel–aged line of syrup as well. The syrup is aged in the barrel for four months before bottling, giving it a woody, bourbon-infused flavor.

Low profit, high satisfaction
For all the labor and equipment, Anthony said syrup isn’t their most lucrative crop. Still, there’s something about watching the gallons add up that keeps him coming back. It’s also time with people he cares about.

“I get to spend time with my dad and some guys from work, Joe (his brother-in-law) – not my wife,” he joked. “She’s usually sleeping by the time I get done.”

Maple is just one slice of the Behn Farm’s operation. In summer and fall, the farm shifts gears to sweet corn and pumpkins, a sunflower field as a photo backdrop, and plans for home-grown mums. Looking ahead, they’re eyeing more agritourism and even a sensory farm.

For now, though, most weekends in March end the same way: with steam rolling off the evaporator, pencil marks climbing higher in the record book, and another batch of maple syrup headed for that small honor-system stand off Highway 10.