Maple Sugaring is one of the most popular, and enduring projects offered on campus. While venerable sugar maples stand with buckets at the heart of Proctor along North Street, the future can be seen east of the Blackwater Ski Area, where forestry and woods team programs have been cultivating a major "sugarbush" by thinning the woods of competing species.
This type of planned land use management guarantees many decades of increased sap product, as these young maples mature and grow. Last week's warm nighttime temperatures delayed the sap run, but plenty of other tasks needed attention: tapping trees, chopping hardwoods for the evaporater stove, and continuing the sugarbush expansion with selective cutting. On Friday, at last, enough sap ran for a boil.
When sap had been reduced to syrup, the Day Care kids came over to make maple candy in the snow. Could anything be more fun?
