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The end of winter marks the beginning of not just spring, but sugaring season. One local maple syrup producer has brought generations of family experience to Posen.

For generations, Sarah and her sister Jean watched their family make a living off of tapping the perfect trees at the perfect time, to capture the sap that would create that sweet, rich artisan maple syrup. Sarah Orban and her family are actually 9th generation maple syrup producers, with their family sugarhouse right in Vermont. So when Sarah moved to Posen with her husband, it was a no-brainer to get a sugarhouse up and running to keep the family tradition alive.

During March and April, the maple trees thaw, so the sugar that’s been stored in the roots is free to move up the tree to feed the leaves, making it the perfect time to tap for sap.

“We’ll haul it back here, which is actually happening right now, they’re unloading a load of sap, and we’ll measure the sugar content, and we’ll calculate how many gallons are coming in. Once we’re ready to process it we run it through our reverse osmosis machine, which simply put just takes more water molecules out of the sap,” says Sarah.

Sarah says they boil around 6,000 gallons of sap at a time, which turns out only about a hundred and twenty gallons of maple syrup. Sarah’s sister Jean remembers her grandfather teaching them at a young age what a good haul looks like.

“He always used to say, as long as you made enough for yourselves, a little bit to sell, and nobody got hurt, it’s a good season.”

Although the Goodrich’s have done a little more than that. Both Sarah and her parents have successfully turned maple syrup into a career.

“We use that product and we do it on a commercial scale, just like this only a little bit bigger. It brings us our livelihood. And it provides us with an ability to work for ourselves, and not have to commute to work somewhere else for another industry,” says Sarah’s mom Ruth.

In addition to those added benefits, Jean says making maple syrup is just a part of who they are.

“We grew up doing this. It’s like how other kids learned the basics, this is the basics for us this has always been a part of our lives.”

And while she preserves a great deal of family history with her sugarhouse, Sarah has made her business her own. Donning a small label that reads ‘Homegrown by Heroes,’ each bottle lets customers know that their syrup was produced by veterans like Sarah and her husband. For a taste of a Michigan maple syrup with generations of history, head to Thunder Bay Maple Supply in Posen.