Shepherd Sugar Bush

Community, Arnold & Merrie Hammel
415 N. 3rd Street
Shepard, MI

The Shepherd Sugar Bush has been producing maple syrup since 1958. Their “woods” consists of the trees lining the streets in the village of Shepherd (population 1400). They have about 2200 taps with buckets. Work is done by members of the Sugar Bush board and other volunteers from the community. In addition, other producers, including the Lions Club of Stanton, MI, bring in sap. The group uses a 6-ft by 16-ft oil fired evaporator and reverse osmosis.

What started with a production of 100 gallons of syrup and served a few hundred meals at the first one-day festival, has grown into processing 1000 gallons of syrup and serving 10,000 pancake, syrup, and sausage meals at their three-day festival held on the last full weekend of April each year. Proceeds from the festival activities finance the summer recreation program for the youth in the Shepherd school district. The festival funds also were used to build a community swimming pool and the Little Salt River Park. These are maintained and operated by profits from the Maple Syrup Festival activities.