Broken Heart Sugar Company continues to expand offerings

By Chad Koenen

Publisher

As steam flows out of a pipe just steps from his shop in rural Deer Creek, Jim Heinze has an eagerness to his voice as he prepares for another busy day creating maple syrup for his still young company Broken Heart Sugar Company. As far as hobby’s go, Heinze may have one of the tastiest of them all, as he spends each spring creating pure maple syrup in his growing sugar shack just off of Highway 210.

“The hobby has kind of gotten out of hand, but it is a lot of fun,” he said with a laugh. “It’s a good activity to get out when you have been cooped up all winter.”

Heinze, who is entering his fifth year at Broken Heart Sugar Company, found his passion in creating maple syrup from his uncle as just a young child. He fondly remembers going to his uncle’s farm as a child each spring to help collect sap and take in all of the sweet smells and tastes of creating maple syrup. 

“I started as a little kid. I had an uncle by Collegeville and their whole farm was maples,” said Heinze. “As a kid we would get to go one day on a Saturday or Sunday and take it all in.”

Throughout his career in the construction industry, Heinze spent much of his time in syrup hotbeds like Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts during the maple season. He would frequently drive around in his down times and visit with the locals who made creating syrup a bit of an art-form on the East Coast. 

“I would just drive around and look for some steam and knock on the door. The people were really friendly,” said Heinze of the maple syrup producers on the East Coast. 

Looking back on his childhood, Heinze always felt a tug to get into the maple industry when his time doing construction came to an end. When he retired a few years ago, Heinze decided he wanted to get back to his family roots of being in the maple industry on a part-time basis. While he intended to tap into some maple trees on his family’s land near Browerville, Heinze began visiting with his neighbors near Deer Creek who offered their vast maple trees as a closer alternative to creating a maple masterpiece.

This year Heinze put up 425 taps near Deer Creek. Due to the unseasonably warm temperatures, Heinze tapped his first tree on Jan. 30 “and the trees were just pouring (sap),” he said. He just tapped two trees in January and completed the rest of his taps on Feb. 19, which is about a month earlier than in 2023 when he tapped trees on St. Patrick’s Day. However, last year the bags sat mostly empty for two weeks until the temperatures began to warm up and the sap began to run. 

Over the past month Heinze has already created 60 gallons of syrup and is hopeful for an extended season that could be one of the best on the books. 

“Right now it could be the best year we have ever had or a failure of epic proportions,” said Heinze. “If it gets too nice the trees all bud and the season is done. We, unfortunately, have no control over it.”

For the best sap production the weather freezes at night and warms up to above freezing during the day. Once the weather no longer freezes at night the maple syrup season essentially comes to an end as the sap no longer flows. 

Entering his fifth year at Broken Heart Sugar Company company, Heinze is already planning for next season on his rural Deer Creek farm. He is constructing a pipe system to collect the sap and have it delivered into a bulk tank system, which will allow him to avoid going to each tree every day to check on the sap collection. He is planning to utilize the pipe system as soon as next year, which will not only provide more sap for his growing business, but also make the collection process easier than ever before.

Currently it takes a minimum of three people the better part of an afternoon to go into the woods to collect the sap, which doesn’t include boiling the sap, cleaning equipment and getting ready for the next day. 

Heinze said he starts the approximately two hour sap collection process around 3 p.m. each day. With the assistance of neighbors and employees, Heinze unloads the tanks and begins the reverse osmosis process, which is an expansive process that can take several hours. On Monday night Heinze worked until about midnight as he completed the reverse osmosis process and cleaned the tanks. 

He was at work bright and early the next morning as he continued to create his custom maple syrup for the masses across the region. Depending on the day, it can take anywhere from 29-43 gallons of sap to create just one gallon of maple syrup.

Heinze sells Broken Heart Syrup at 8-10 businesses across the region. The syrup is sold in St. Joseph, Brooten, Belgrade, Wadena, Glenwood, B&D Foods in Henning and Mills Locker Plant in New York Mills. 

“I wanted to offset some of my expenses,” said Heinze of the idea of creating a maple company. 

The local maple connoisseur said he came up with the name and the label as a way to help the business set itself apart from other locally crafted maple syrup businesses. He credits the name and label for making the local maple syrup stand out on the shelf of stores across the region.

“You have to have a label that sets it apart from the six others on the shelf,” he said. 

For more information about Broken Heart Sugar Company, visit the company on its Facebook page.