 ake a step back in time with us to the beginning of Pripps
Sugar Bush.
 In 1901 Bernard Pripps and
his wife Louise bought an old French Canadian fur trader’s cabin and moved
up to the deep wild woods of Northern Wisconsin along the edge of what is now
the Chequamegon National Forest near the quaint little village of Springstead.
At that time Grandpa Barney set up a logging camp and sawmill to harvest some
of the vast stands of timber in the great north woods. In addition to the
virgin white pines and hemlocks there was a maple sugar bush. (A sugar
bush is the term used for the grove or forest of maple trees that give the
precious sweet sap in the first sunny days of early spring.)
Each spring, along
with our ancestors, the Native Americans from the nearby Lac Du Flambeau Indian
Reservation came and tapped the maple trees for their annual supply of maple
sugar that they used for themselves or traded with their nearby neighbors. Years later the Pripps Sugar Bush company began when Bernard’s
great great grandson moved “up north” and continued tapping in the
very same sugar bush that provided generations of delicious maple syrup and
maple sugar. |
