Herb Wills, owner of Caribou Cream, has been producing local maple syrup for the past 30 years in Cook County. After an especially cold April night, Herb sets out into the woods to check his lines and make sure they are not frozen. Photo by John Stember
All along the shore of the big lake, the woods are speckled with snowshoe tracks left behind from folks tapping and monitoring the spring maple syrup run.
Up the Caribou Trail near Lutsen, Herb Wills has been tapping trees and boiling sap since 1984. It all started out as a simple, self-taught hobby, as it is for many backyarders throughout Cook County. All you need to do is drill a hole, hang a bucket, put a pan over a fire, and bring the sap to a boil.
But don’t let that fool you, Herb’s been doing it—with the help of his longtime friend Rene Swadburg—for over 30 years now and produces over 1,000 gallons of syrup a season for his business, Caribou Cream.
The maple syrup process starts off in the woods each spring. With folks’ help, Herb installs over 25 miles of line and a few hundred buckets for collecting sap. Each February this process of tapping the maple trees must be restarted to allow the trees to heal between seasons. This year at Caribou Cream, Herb tapped 3,600 trees in about a week.
Herb Wills, owner of Caribou Cream, has tapped 3,600 trees this season using a system of tubing and buckets to funnel the sap. Photo by John Stember
Despite all the technology and high-tech instruments, the maple syrup season is up to Mother Nature. And with warming winters and fluctuating springs along the North Shore, the ideal conditions required for the sap to run with a high sugar content don’t show up every year.
“Just depends on the season and weather,” says Rene, Herb’s longtime friend and assistant. “It’s all driven by Mother Nature. You must have temperatures above freezing during the day and below freezing during the night. So, normally by the middle of March, we are in production. But it’s up to Mother Nature.”
Once the maple trees are tapped and the lines and buckets installed, the sap is carried downslope by gravity into the main tank called the sap collector. Here the speed of the sap and amount coming in is recorded. During peak season, the sap can clock in at 1,000 gallons a day. It typically takes around 40 gallons of sap to make a single gallon of syrup.
From the main tank, Herb, the mad maple syrup scientist, pipes the sap into another building to remove water content through reverse osmosis, which helps reduce the boiling time. After the water content is partially cut, the complex and precise system of cooking, filtering, and bottling starts.
From this point on, Rene takes over. It’s her job to boil the raw sap into syrup using a wood-fired evaporator. This metal apparatus looks kind of like a monstrous oven and consistently gets up to 800 to 900 degrees for cooking. The goal is to heat the sap to 217.8 degrees whereby it turns into maple syrup. A boil from start to finish can take up to three to five hours. Once the sap is ready, the sugary mixture is filtered and then stored in metal drums.
Under Herb and Rene’s watchful eyes, Caribou Cream sells out each season. Most of the liquid gold is sold locally or at the State Fair. They produce two different kinds: a Grade-A, light-colored syrup, and a Grade-B, heavier and more robust syrup, which is made at the end of the season.
Despite working with maple syrup for the past 30 years, neither shy away from their love or taste for the homemade brew. “It’s something about the northern climate here, we’re just blessed for making nice syrup. The big lake I think has something to do with it,” believes Herb. As the hardwoods continue to expand northward in Minnesota due to milder winters, Cook County is looking good for maple country.
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