If you are walking the halls of Trumansburg High School and start to smell something really good in the STEAM wing, it’s not your imagination. It’s maple syrup.
For the last three years, high school STEAM and French students have been working on The Maple Syrup Project, led by STEAM Collaborators and teachers Rachel Paparone and Paul Wiech.
“Our first year, STEAM students built a reverse osmosis filter and marketed syrup, while French students learned about Quebecois culture and their rich history of maple syrup production,” Rachel explained.
Rachel noted that the process to extract maple syrup from the maple trees on and near school grounds “can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it.” Basically, you drill 1.5 inches into the tree, insert a spile (a tap), attach a bucket or a bag, and boil the sap until the sugar content reaches 66.7-68.5 Brix, Rachel said.
“Our first year we tapped 13 trees,” she continued. “The second year we tapped 45ish and expanded to include Elementary School Students and our Food Science class. This year, we're K-12 with about 50 trees, and we've shifted to being entirely student led.”
In one of their bigger maple syrup events of the year, the Maple Syrup Project team is hosting its Adopt-A-Maple Pancake Breakfast on Saturday, March 23 in the high school STEAM wing. Community member Lane Voorheis and his family are pitching in to help the team expand its menu, junior Beyonca Akers said.
“We will have pancakes, french toast, sausage gravy and biscuits and a variety of sides,” Beyonca noted. “We are also giving the option of food to-go! Dedicated students are working as waiters to give you the real restaurant feel! All proceeds will go to our Maple Syrup Program and students' trip to Montreal. Later that same day, we will have a Maple Syrup Workshop where families can come in and learn the whole process of making their own syrup. This is a two-hour session that costs $80. Families will return home with their very own materials to support their maple syrup process at home!”
For those interested in the event, you might be surprised with how good T’burg’s in-house maple syrup actually is.
“We think our maple syrup is better than what you get in the store because we've put in the hard work to follow it from tree to table,” Rachel said.
“Most syrup you buy in a store are butter syrup or pancake syrup, not maple syrup. However, large scale producers that make the true maple syrup you'd find in a store (think Wegmans brand) typically source their syrup from many different smaller producers and create a consistent blend. Smaller producers like us might have variations in flavor and color between batches, and syrup exhibits terroir just like wine. Our syrup tends to have a nice marshmallow flavor, but someone else's syrup might exhibit different flavors such as vanilla, caramel, floral, etc. But we definitely prefer our own syrup over store-bought syrup.”
Beyonca agreed.
“When I think of maple syrup you buy in the store, my brain goes to the Pearl Milling Company syrup,” she said. “Before I had real syrup, I thought it was delicious, but now I'd rather eat my pancakes without syrup. It's just too sweet and lacks a depth in flavor. I've learned that different shades of syrup have different flavors and much prefer our own syrup.”