Two brothers, a dairy farm in Denmark, Wisconsin, and a few old buckets found in the woods.
The land
The Skardas settled in Kellnersville, Wisconsin in 1861, and six generations later the land is still in the family. Our grandfather George Skarda homesteaded 540 acres of it. Our parents, Jerry and Rita, ran the dairy farm in Denmark and raised five kids on it, which is where Andy and Jeff learned that things get fixed by the people who use them and that work is how a family spends time together.
Grandpa had one rule for the boys: keep the land in the Skarda name. In 2006 we took a hundred pines our parents and grandparents had planted sixty years earlier and built a log cabin from them. The cabinets inside are walnut from the same woods. Nearly every board in it grew here.
The buckets
One deer season, walking the farm, we found a stack of old galvanized buckets in the trees and asked Dad what they were for. Grandpa, it turned out, used to tap the maples. That planted the idea.
In 2008 Andy tapped a few silver maples in his backyard in Janesville and boiled the sap on a turkey fryer. It worked, at about half a gallon of syrup an hour, and it took all day. By 2010 he had bought a real evaporator and moved the whole thing back to the farm, where the maples were. That first year we ran about 120 taps and made five gallons. The next year 22, then 33, then 66.
"Andy is really stubborn. He moves ahead with his plans no matter what. And although his plans seem a little crazy at first glance, they typically turn out to be great ideas in the end." Jeff
The sugar shack
The old milk house became the sugar house, with an addition built on in 2014. Inside is the evaporator, which turns forty gallons of sap into one gallon of syrup an hour, a reverse osmosis machine that pulls water out of the sap before it ever hits the pan, a filter press that takes out the sugar sand so the syrup comes out clear, and a water-jacketed bottler that holds it at 180 degrees so every bottle seals itself.
Today we run about 1,500 taps across the home farm and three neighboring sugarbushes and make a few hundred gallons of Grade A Amber Rich syrup a year. Every spring, when the nights drop below freezing and the days climb above, the sap runs and we boil the same day it is collected. Nothing is added.
"If it's a quality product, it's not that difficult to sell. It's amazing how many repeat customers you have once they know about you." Jeff
Paid for by syrup
We have grown the operation without borrowing a dollar. Each year's syrup pays for the next year's taps and tubing, and for the next improvement to the cabin: the fireplace, the bathroom, the septic. The farm funds itself, which is the way our parents would have done it.
"In today's world a lot of people just go to the bank and ask to borrow $40,000 to invest in their operations. But we would never do that because we're just a couple of old farmers. We want to do this debt-free." Jeff
Who does what
Andy runs the bush and the evaporator. Jeff, an electrical engineer in Appleton the rest of the year, bottles, runs the filter press and handles sales. Our kids collect sap in the spring, help cook it, and have run more than one pretend farmers market in the sugar house. Between us we have six of them learning the same thing we learned here.
"Working together is how our family bonds. Without the maple syrup we wouldn't have this kind of bond." Andy
Why we do it
We want people to know that maple syrup is really good, that it is better for you than what comes in the plastic bottle, and that a lot of it is made right here in Wisconsin. So we keep it affordable, we put it in local grocery stores and gift shops, and we bring the evaporator story to elementary schools every spring.
"It's that sort of thing that reassures me they're learning a lot from this. I am teaching them a good work ethic and creating good memories with them. That's so much of why I do this." Jeff
Licensed, inspected, insured
- Inspected and licensed annually by the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (WDATCP) as a food processing plant for maple syrup production.
- Proud members of the Wisconsin Maple Syrup Producers Association, the state association of sugarmakers.
- Every product carries its own UPC barcode.
- Product liability insurance carried.
Read more in the news: Agri-View spent a day at the shack in 2018, and NBC26 and Spectrum News have come by at tapping time since. Or come see it boil: get in touch and we will find a time during the season.