Cold nights and warm days around New England can only mean one thing – maple syrup.
Cold nights and warm days around New England can only mean one thing - maple syrup.
Farmers and foresters around Connecticut are in on the sap run action, including some at UConn.
“When the sap is running, we are running, too,” Zachary Placzek, a senior at UConn, said.
He is one of a small faction of future foresters, learning a unique New England skill.
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“This is my third year of doing sugar maple operations at UConn,” Placzek said.
He is one of nearly a dozen students this year that are keeping the craft alive at the school. The sugarhouse, he said, is his favorite springtime classroom, and smoke billowing from the smokestack, means class is in session.
“Being a student, I mean it’s just so nice to have a beautiful outlet,” he said.
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Running as often as it can, their single evaporator will produce roughly one gallon of syrup for every 40 gallons of sap they collect.
It takes hours to boil down, but students say its well worth it.
“It’s very rewarding, the whole process, producing something,” Placzek said.
While we caught up with students boiling the sap down to the liquid gold that pairs so well with a stack of pancakes, they are also responsible for the collection, too.
About a stones throw away from campus, on about five acres of school managed land, a web of lines snakes through the forest for harvest.
“I’m just subject to whatever they are doing today,” said Gabriela Fonseca, who we caught filling a tank with morning sap.
Fonseca is from Puerto Rico and had never experienced sap collection until coming to work at UConn. It’s something described as incredible, learning about New England culture.
“Not only valuable to the culture, but connects us to the local resources we seem to be so disconnected from,” Fonseca said.
It’s the warm sunny days coming off cold nights the sap runs the best, and collection is fruitful.
“Depending on the day, yesterday was a pretty slow day we got about 25 gallons so it depends day by day,” Fonseca said.
So far this year, students have collected roughly 400 gallons, and the sap is still running.
Extension professor Thomas Worthley, who helps the students, said anytime they are outside, it’s a good year.
“Much of what we do is exactly what they did 200 years ago,” Worthley said.
Other than upgrades to technology, they follow the same process farmers have been doing for centuries, and he notes much like farmers going back decades, you’re at the mercy of nature.
Students are responsible for the sugarbush maintenance and protection all year long. Good sap runs are the perk of solid management.
He said the student-run sugaring operation has been around for roughly 15 to 20 years, and was started by his predecessor. It has its up and down years, all dependent on how many students in a given year are interested in the practice.
“It builds a material connection to the resource around us, so people appreciate the forest resource and what the many benefits that it provides,” Worthley said.
Back on campus, Placzek is in his last spring of sugaring at UConn. He told us he is proud of the work he has done in the last few years. He described the work that went into the program post-COVID protocol to get the operation back up and running. Now he hopes others will keep it going.
“With a little persuasion from the forest crew, we can keep operations going just as we are doing right now,” he said.
