Tapping into the sweetness of spring

Bob Bucher had watched enough people tapping their maple trees and bottling syrup that one year he decided to do it himself.

“I saw a few people doing it and thought it would be interesting,” the Town of Richmond man said in mid-March. “Like they say, once you start it, you’re hooked.”

He and his wife, Cindy, have been making maple syrup the past seven years. Last month, they tapped 54 trees.

After several long days, they ended up with nearly 60 quarts of syrup, a few more than in years past.

His process is like many others’ — tap the trees, let the sap flow into the bags, cook it down and then bottle it for friends and family.

Maple syrup season begins with the flowing of the sap within the tree. Temperatures need to rise above freezing during the day but then cool off to 32 degrees or less at night.

“Usually we don’t leave the (bags of) sap on the trees for more than a day or two, because then it’ll start to sour,” Bucher said.

He stores the sap in 35-gallon storage tanks until he’s ready to start cooking.

On a Saturday in March, Cindy Bucher was outside at 4 a.m. to start stoking the fire. Her husband soon followed, and the day’s work was underway.

When cooking the sap, “we shoot for 10 gallons an hour,” he said.

It takes 10 gallons (40 quarts) of sap to make one quart of syrup.

The Buchers only collect their sap once a season, which makes all of their syrup the same color.

The syrup color is often determined by the when the sap is harvested. An early harvest produces light sap; a later harvest will mean darker syrup.

Then, it’s time to bottle the syrup.

“I wait until I have about three batches cooked, and then I finish it into syrup,” he said. “I put that on a propane burner, and it takes about three-quarters of a day.”

If you overcook the syrup, you end up with sugar crystals. If you undercook it, the syrup is thin and watery.

The cooked syrup is filtered again before bottling. Bucher uses a stainless steel filter press with seven plates that draws the syrup through it for filtering.

“It comes out crystal clear,” he said. “You’re talking, using an Orlon filter — hours, hours, hours. When I use that filter press, I can go through 50 quarts in 15 minutes.”

Bucher adds cinnamon sticks to some of his bottles.

“We sell some of it, give a lot of it to family,” he said. “I know one year we’ve even given some to the food pantry when we had extra left over. We donate some to the church picnic every year.”

Bucher still learns something new every season, and his setup today is much different than that first year when he used a turkey cooker.

“It took forever,” he said. “We’re talking hours per gallon, not gallons per hour.”

Now, he uses an old fuel tank for his fire. The tank is lined with ceramic brick to maintain interior heat.

In the beginning, he relied a lot on the internet and books to guide him.

“The internet was my friend,” Bucher said. “I bought books, too, and I just dove into it. You learn by mistake, and enough of them were made.”

It’s still work to make the syrup, but it’s work Bucher enjoys.

“I like the time out here,” he said. “I like to sit out here, like early in the morning and just watch everything wake up.”

His dad, Jerry, died in December 2025.

“My dad was kind of an old German; he was always grumpy about something,” Bucher said. “The last few years, he would always come out here, sit with me, and we would talk like we were friends. Not having that this year, it’s a big difference.”

This season, he was joined by Cindy and his sister, Sue.

“I’m retired now,” Bucher said. “I look forward to it. It gets us doing something together,” he said, pointing to his wife.

kpasson@newmedia-wi.com