OUR STORY
The history of Running Tree Sugarhouse is more of a family story than it is how a business got started. David "Beaner" Lemke, owner, is the 3rd generation Lemke to carry on the family tradition of cooking maple syrup. His Grandmother-Hessafort started the tradition of taping trees as a little girl in the state of New York, and brought it with her when the family moved to Wisconsin. As a young boy Beaner and his brother Dennis would help out whenever they visited their grandmother. After years of learning how to tap trees and collect sap the two brothers carried on the tradition after school by tapping about 30 trees with their father Dave A Lemke.
Today, the three Lemke's are still working together on a business they started nearly 50 years ago. Although tapping trees looks much different now, with lines running from tree to tree all flowing to centralized tanks. The setting up of the tree lines is still mostly done by Dave, Beaner and Dennis Lemke. The family business continues to expand as both Beaner and Dennis are lucky enough to have their children come out to help carry on their family tradition. Even Dave Lemke's wife, Shirley, helps to maintain the bookkeeping, paperwork and other odds and ends needed to run the business. Running Tree Sugarhouse has always been a family business, but without the help of some amazing friends and coworkers it wouldn't have been able to grow into the business it is today. We believe that if we can create the best product that we can, we will also become the best company that we can be.
About Us
Hello and welcome to Running Tree Sugarhouse! We are a family and friend business, owned and operated by Dave A Lemke, Dave E (Beaner) Lemke and Dennis Lemke. We are in the business of producing Pure Maple Syrup and Birch Syrup. Our goal is to provide the highest quality maple syrup that will give our customers the ability to create unique and exciting meals. In addition, we are committed to working with local vendors and farmers who promote sustainable agriculture in our community.
Our maple syrup is produced in small batches with special care to ensure you only receive the highest quality products. We produce our maple syrup by boiling the maple sap collected from the our trees. We collect this sap in early spring during March and April when the daytime temperature rises above freezing to allow the sap to flow and the nighttime temperature drops below freezing, forcing the sap back up the tree in order to run the next day.
This narrow window of four to six weeks is when the magic really happens at our sugar shack, during that time frame we produced 317 barrels in 2019. Our maple syrup reserves are stored year round so we can deliver the best pure maple syrup all year long. We taste test and color grade every single batch to make sure that it meets our exacting standards. We have come a long way since we first started tapping trees. Now we start with vacuum tubing running from tree to tree which is pumped into our storage tanks and hauled to the sugar shack. Once it arrives on site it is ran through our reverse osmosis machine before it is cooked down into the purest maple syrup Wisconsin has to offer. With all this new technology we utilize, we are now able to produce, market, and ship our fine maple products to destinations worldwide.
