Posted Wednesday --- January 9, 2008

You've heard the phrase buy local. Well, one new business did just that while creating the look and feel of Europe in its new pastry shop.

There's a hidden treasure inside this new pastry shop on the capitol square. Punky Egan thought downtown Madison would be the perfect place to open up a little pastry shop. It seems fitting for the Madison Area Technical College professor of cooking and pastry arts to put her skills to use. "We really want to feature and use as much local products and sustainable products as we can," said Egan about her business.

While the pastries are made at Sucre downtown Madison, the ambiance that's created in her shop came partially from a forest near Spring Green. A forest owned and managed by Jim Birkemeier. He uses his land as a business. "We make the flooring right in our old barn," explained Birkemeier.

He takes only one tree per acre, per year and turns it into a masterpiece. Birkemeier says he manages his forest very differently than most loggers or foresters. He takes only what needs to be taken from the land. "There's some sugar maple that had actually fallen, tipped over in the forest, but we salvaged it," said Birkemeier.

When he salvaged the tree and carefully selected other trees to cut down on his land, he had no idea his wood would be the perfect fit for this sweet shop. Egan had found out about his business and wanted wood flooring. She was going to put in bamboo flooring, but she decided to check out Birkemeier because he was local. "He said what I do with my wood is I use the whole tree so some of your boards widths will be narrow, some will be wide, you will have the maple sugar holes in it where they pegged it for making the maple syrup," explained Egan.

"This is a sweet shop and when they heard we had sugar maple that was the obvious choice. The neat thing about it is these trees have been tapped for sap so someone had drilled holes in it and taken the sap to make maple syrup and that leaves a hole and a stain that goes out from each side and in the industry that's thrown away--that's a problem where for us it's a great asset it made that floor totally unique. It tells the story of sugar," smiled Birkemeier.

Before long, the story of sugar was put on display for all to see and walk on. Piece by piece, the sugar maple floors were put in the sweet shop. "It was a wonderful concept and to me it ties everything together so I really liked the idea of using the whole tree and this look and I think it's a beautiful design. It's not just the plain white wood, but we have all this beautiful texture and color in it, so it really is a beautiful color I think," said Egan.

It's a move that's turned out to be a win-win for both businesses. Egan got the look and feel she wanted for flooring and Birkemeier got to use his wood to create the look. "It's such an encouragement to see your product in use because most landowners if the log gets put on a truck it will probably go to China and get manufactured and they don't know where it goes and we're able to see our wood right here," Birkemeier said.

"It has the ambiance of city life and the buzz and things happening and I wanted to be part of that. I wanted this very special European style patisserie and I think we've achieved that," said Egan.

The pastry shop has a European feel and just opened up New Years Eve. You can visit Sucre at: 20 West Mifflin Street, Madison

Timbergreen forestry has been in Spring Green for awhile and makes everything from floors to wooden pens. You may visit it's retail location at: 124 West Jefferson Street, Spring Green. Or call: (608) 588-7342

http://www.TimbergreenForestry.com

http://www.TimberGrowers.com