From hobbyists to entrepreneurs, Wisconsin’s maple syrup industry is growing

Scott Walter’s family is all about maple syrup.

For generations, they’ve been making maple syrup on their family farm in rural Viola, from his grandfather who during the Great Depression would sleep in the woods to keep the fires going for the syrup he was cooking to his own kids who grew up tapping the large maple tree in the front yard with buckets each spring.

In 2015, Walter and his wife, Erica, decided to turn the longtime family tradition into a business. They sell roughly 2,500 gallons of Driftless Gold maple syrup every year at farmers markets and grocery stores.

Their love of maple syrup runs deep: They almost named their new puppy Maple — until they met him and realized he was more of a Frank — and Walter can point to favorite trees they’ve tapped over the years on the 140-acre farm. In his office hang pictures of his kids making maple syrup when they were younger, now a family business they plan to take over one day.

“One thing that is clear to me: Once somebody gets involved in maple syrup, either as a business or just a backyard hobbyist, they never get out,” Walter said.

While Wisconsin is most commonly known for producing cheese and milk, maple syrup production has exploded across the state in recent years, from hobbyists tapping a tree in their backyard to entrepreneurs launching small businesses.

Wisconsin is the fourth-largest producer of maple syrup in the country, behind Vermont, New York and Maine. The amount of maple syrup produced in Wisconsin has more than doubled over the last decade, from about 200,000 gallons of syrup produced in 2014 to about 458,000 gallons in 2024, according to annual statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 2005, Wisconsin only produced roughly 50,000 gallons of syrup.

Theresa Baroun, executive director of the Wisconsin Maple Syrup Producers Association, said the USDA’s figures don’t reflect the full amount of maple syrup production in the state because it doesn’t factor in hobbyists. She said there’s still room to grow the state’s syrup industry.

“Wisconsin is one of the states that has so many maple trees that are just untapped. So there’s room for expansion,” she said.

How do you make maple syrup?

“To put it really simply, to make maple syrup, all you have to do is remove water from maple sap,” Walter said.

The first thing you need to make maple syrup is a tree. Any species of maple tree can be tapped, but the most commonly tapped varieties in Wisconsin are sugar, red and silver maples. Trees need to be at least 10 inches in diameter, Walter said.

Next you’ll need to tap the tree with a spile, which is a kind of spigot, and collect the sap in a container, like a bucket or bag. Some larger producers use blue tubes that run through the woods and lead to storage tanks. They can be seen running along country roads, a sure sign that spring has arrived in Wisconsin.

After the sap is collected, it needs to be boiled down to remove water until it’s thick and syrupy, and the equipment for this step can range from simple to sophisticated.

Eric Harms started tapping trees in his yard in Maple Bluff, a suburb of Madison along the shores of Lake Mendota, roughly 12 years ago. True to the name of his community, Harms said, he was first inspired by a neighbor to start making syrup and picked up the hobby with his son. At first, they used an enamel pot over a metal firepit in their backyard to cook down their syrup, but Harms has since built an outdoor stove with cement blocks that holds three shallow pans over the fire.

Commercial operations often use equipment to help expedite the process, such as the large evaporator and reverse osmosis machine Walter uses to help remove water from the sap more quickly. They can produce about 200 gallons of syrup a day with the help of the equipment, turning sap into syrup in roughly four or five hours.

On average, 40 gallons of sap makes roughly one gallon of syrup, and the window to produce maple syrup each spring is short and sweet.

Sap production relies on a freeze-thaw cycle and typically starts in Wisconsin in February or March, when the days are warmer but the temperatures drop again before freezing at night. The season ends once the flower buds on the maple trees start to expand. Walter said he works 16-hour days during tapping season, from cooking down the sap to repairing tubes that a squirrel might have chewed through.

“The way I put it to people, it’s like we’re dairy farmers, but we have to milk all our cows in three weeks,” Walter said.

A sweet obsession

Harms said syrup-making has turned into a ritual of spring for him.

“I get out, I can start a fire, I chop wood, it’s good exercise. I brew coffee with some of the sap, and that’s not something you can do year-round. It’s very ritualistic,” he said.

After Harms started producing more syrup, he started to share it with neighbors and coworkers. He’s hosted maple-themed dinners and cocktail parties — with maple-glazed salmon and ice cream containing maple candy shards — and auctioned off family-friendly experiences tapping trees for neighborhood fundraisers. He’s recently decided to downsize and sell his house, and while he said it wouldn’t be a deal-breaker if it didn’t, he’s hoping his next home has maple trees.

Walter said the industry has grown in Wisconsin partly because there’s a strong desire to buy locally in the state. “People are coming to realize that they can buy syrup from somebody right down the road,” he said. But it’s also a testament to Wisconsinites’ connection to nature.

“People inherently, I think, have a connection to the land. Birdwatching, hiking, camping, fishing, all these things are an expression of that,” he said. “But I think maple syrup production is something like gardening or hunting that allows people to engage in nature, get outside, learn, and then put something in their kitchen cupboard that they can use throughout the year.”