Local pastor turns new passion into sweet project for entire school

By Jennifer Eisenbart

Editor

The Rev. Kirk Lahmann has done maple syrup before.

At his home – about a block away from his church, St. John’s Lutheran, Burlington – he tapped his three maple trees at home for sap, which he turned into syrup.

“Last year, I had five taps and 25 gallons,” Lahmann explained. “It boiled down to two quarts of syrup.

“It’s liquid candy,” he quickly added. “It tastes so good.”

Having learned the craft last year, Lahmann decided to take the project to the next level this spring. Tapping the 11 maple trees on the church and school property for a total of 16 taps has yielded 205 gallons of sap so far – and that’s not counting the full bags on the trees that needed to be emptied Tuesday.

“It’s way more than we expected,” Lahmann explained. “We’ve each been taking the buckets home, filtering and boiling like crazy.”

The tree tapping has been a winter-into-spring project for both the church – and for St. John’s Lutheran School.

Starting out

Lahmann decided last year to try his hand at maple syrup. With the help of Eric and Connie DeSmidt, Lahmann made his first attempt at maple syrup.

His three trees were each tapped with a spile. The spile then was attached to a metal framework that allowed the sap to drain into large blue plastic bags.

“It was just kind of exciting,” Lahmann said. “You’d see the tree dripping. You’d want to go out every hour.”

However, you need a lot of sap to get even a small amount of syrup. The sap from a maple tree isn’t like what you’d see, say, from a pine tree. It’s exceptionally watery and very thin.

“It’s like sugar water,” Lahmann said.

Once the sap is collected, it has to be filtered to remove any number of small bits of debris and water – and then boiled down. A stockpot of about 24 quarts boils down to about a half quart of syrup.

“That’s the biggest time-consuming thing,” Lahmann said. “Boiling it, and let the steam go away.”

Starter kits for sap collection can be found online, some of which even come from Wisconsin.

Larger scale

With his success last spring, Lahmann decided to turn it into a school project in trying to see how much maple syrup they could produce.

“It’s he (Eric DeSmidt) and I, we both kind of had a passion for it,” he said. “We wanted to see how big we could go … and we turned it into a hands-on science project.”

In early February, Lahmann tapped the trees and involved every grade level at the school.

“We showed them our equipment,” “We showed all the grades how to tap the trees. We tried to let them help a little bit.”

The next step? Collecting all the sap. Lahmann tried to time it so that the students could help out with the process.

“I think they loved it,” Lahmann said. “They were always excited when I went out.”

Students have been respectful of the process. The equipment has remained on the trees and intact, and now the school and church are looking at a bumper crop.

“I’d be happy if we got five gallons of pure maple syrup,” Lahmann said. “It might be more than that.”

Plans for the syrup haven’t been determined. The church has been so busy boiling the sap and turning into syrup that no one knows yet what will be done.

Lahmann said the church is looking at either a fundraiser or at the least, a school lunch featuring pancakes and maple syrup.

However it turns out, it’s been one tasty treat.

“It’s like liquid cotton candy,” Lahmann said. “It’s kind of satisfaction. It’s so simple and so natural, and we did it right here in the city.

“It tastes so good, and it comes right here from these trees.”