We try to make everyday Earth Day, but in honor of today, here are a few of the things we do to minimize our environmental impact. We still have a long way to go, but we're making progress and continuing to learn. Our major focus is protecting forests and their biodiversity. Maple syrup provides income that allows us to keep our lands forested. We also buy maple sap and syrup from other small producers who want to keep their lands forested. Tapped creates the economic incentive to maintain forests to produce maple syrup, provide habitat for a diversity of animals and plants, absorb carbon, and ..read more

The 2024 maple syrup season is “in the books.” There’s still some clean up to do (the worst part of the season), but everything else is wrapped up. Here’s a summary by the numbers. We tapped our first trees on February 18 with the vast majority of our trees tapped on February 24. This is the first time we’ve ever tapped trees in February. Our last sap collection day was April 7. So, our season was 6-7 weeks long. That’s on the upper end of what we think of as the duration of a typical season. We finished the season with 1,040 gallons of maple syrup. That syrup was made from about 45,000 gallon ..read more

“There are no unsacred places, there are only sacred places and desecrated places.” - Wendell Berry As part of Taps + Tapping I recently led two tours of our farm and sugarbush. I didn’t plan to share this quote by Wendell, but it came to mind while on the first tour. It gets to the heart of how I feel about our farm.  If you were standing at the location of our farm 10,000 years ago, you’d be standing at the base of a massive river of ice now named the Langlade Lobe of the Wisconsin Glacier. The glacier would be towering above you, nearly a mile thick. Rushing past you would be rock, san ..read more

April 1, 2024 It’s the season that keeps going! We tapped our first trees on February 18 with the majority of our trees tapped on February 24 and 25. So, it’s getting to be a long and good season. We’ll likely surpass our previous production record as we’re already nearing 900 gallons of maple syrup, and it looks like we have several days of good sap runs coming up this week. The season started out super early, this is the first time we ever tapped in February, and it looked like it would be a short season with very warm temperatures, no snow, and very little frost in the ground. We were lucky ..read more

Saturday, April 6, 2024 12:00 - 5:00 pm Solin Family Farm: N6590 County Road V, Deerbrook, WI Join us to celebrate the 2024 Maple Syrup season! - Sugarbush tours and maple syrup cooking - Maple syrup tasting - Beer samples by District 1 Brewing, Cocoon Brewing, and Skeleton Key Brewery - Chef C's Munchie Mobile (food for purchase) - Music by Ellie Jackson Schedule: 12:00-1:00 and 4:00-5:00 - Sugarbush tours 1:30 - 3:30 Music 12:00 - 4:00 Food, beer samples, maple syrup tasting, and maple syrup cooking Check out the event page for updated details ..read more

Working on the land can be glorious and I love maple syrup season. On beautiful days during maple syrup season, the cranes are calling, other birds are singing, sap is flowing, and spring flowers buds are peeking above the soil, the forest is alive with growth and life. But, not all days are like that. Sometimes days just suck, and sometimes that sucking is a more literal than we’d like it to be. One recent 24 hour period in the sugarbush was like that. It started simple enough. We drove the tractor and tank trailer into the woods on a sunny afternoon to begin collecting sap. As we were collec ..read more

This agreement describes the values and features of Tapped Maple Syrup, LLC purchasing syrup from other maple syrup producers.  The health of our forests, minimizing environmental impacts of our operations, and supporting small, family maple syrup producers is the core of Tapped’s approach to business. This document more fully describes how these values apply to purchasing maple syrup. All of the maple syrup we purchase will be from producers who commit to the guidelines below so we ask all of the producers from whom we buy syrup to review and commit to the guidelines. We recognize that i ..read more

Our maple syrup production is soon to be solar powered! We signed the contract today with North Wind Renewable Energy Cooperative to install our solar panels this summer. The energy generated by the 4.13 kilowatt system should provide the equivalent of all of the electricity consumed during maple syrup production (primarily to run lights, fans, pumps, and reverse osmosis), and about 60% of our overall farm electric needs. Given that our other major energy requirements for cooking are provided by wood, I estimate that we'll be near 90% renewable energy. Now to work on the remaining energy sourc ..read more

When I think of home, I don’t have a picture of a house in my head, I see (and feel) the land on which I grew up and with which I still have a strong connection. This land, originally homeland of the Menominee Nation, is at the edge of the terminal moraine of the Wisconsin glacier. Ten thousand years ago, several thousand feet of ice were piled up here, bulldozing rock to the front of the ice sheet. As the glaciers melted, debris was carried from the base of the glacier into expansive shallow lakes and wetlands. Today, those lakes and wetlands are what we call “The Flats” (home to the state so ..read more

Tapped makes the perfect gift for anyone on your list, the chef, the foodie, the mixologist, the tree hugger, the breakfast lover, the experimenter, and the woods wanderer. Share some holiday cheer with Tapped gift boxes, sample crates/boxes, or a few carefully selected bottles. Holiday Cheer Box Bring cheers to the cocktail lover this holiday season. This box contains everything (besides the whiskey or brandy) needed to make the perfect Old Fashioned Cocktail: a half-pint of Old Fashioned Cocktail Maple Syrup, a 16 oz jar of Traverse City Whiskey Co Premium Cocktail Cherries (our favorite c ..read more