Drip by drip and bottle by bottle, Maple Sweet Dairy turns sap to syrup.
"This has been well over 50 years of producing syrup," Jon Baroun said.
Baroun himself has been making maple syrup for 20 years.
"I enjoy it," he said. "It's a passion."
Baroun and his family often spend days these days inside their De Pere sugar shack, but the process starts in the Wisconsin wilderness.
"You really look forward to going out into the woods," Baroun said. "You get out there and you get a nice sunny warm day, you almost want to sit out there and watch the trees drip."
Maple Sweet Dairy has more than 900 taps. When conditions are right the taps will pull out hundreds of gallons of sap. Back at the sugar shack, the sap is cooked. As it gets hotter and hotter, it also goes darker and darker. After it hits a propane fired finishing pan, the syrup is almost done.
Baroun runs it through a filter press, and the bottles it. It takes about 40 gallons of the original sap to make one gallon of syrup. Each gallon is a sweet reward for a day's hard work. It's work that keeps Baroun coming back day after day.
"Even though you think you make a really great product, you try to make a better product because the day you're done, you're satisfied with what you do, you might as well quit," Baroun said.
Syrup lovers everywhere will hope that day never comes.
