TURNERS FALLS — Scrap wood from Franklin County Technical School’s carpentry program help put maple syrup in the kitchen of the school’s culinary arts department.
And this process is facilitated by the FCTS horticulture shop.
The program, headed by instructor Kurt Richardson, has for five years produced its own maple syrup as a way to educate horticulture students on a historic craft that like them has kept many of the county’s farmers productive between growing seasons.
“The thing we like about sugaring, and kind of the reason we introduced it, was to fill in this gap between winter and spring,” Richardson said as raw sap boiled in a new evaporator on campus. “There’s not a heck of a lot going on. It’s muddy, we can’t work on the fields yet, so this is a great thing for the kids to fill in on.”
The department has about 40 students in four grades.
Tapping is over for the year. Students have collected sap from the few sugar maple trees on campus and from some nearby red maples and Norway maples. But the majority of sap has come from sugar maples on the property of co-instructor Mark Amstein’s neighbor in Buckland. The neighbor allow students to tap the trees for free.
Raw sap is pumped into a holding tank that has a bag filter that removes sticks, leaves and other debris. The sap is gravity-fed through a washing machine hose into the evaporator, which has a safeguard that carefully monitors the volume of sap, adding more whenever necessary.
“Sap comes out of the tree at about 2½ percent sugar. All we’re trying to do is raise that percent of sugar (by removing water from the sap),” Richardson said as students Dylan Wheeler, Cameron Verdieck and Chris Taylor watched over some boiling sap. “Maple candy – you’re simply taking more water out of it.”
The students add wood regularly to feed the flames boiling the sap. Some wood comes from the carpentry shop, some comes from an old cedar fence that once stood on campus, and some is cordwood the department produces. Wheeler said sap must boil at 219 to 220 degrees.
Richardson said wood type does not affect the flavor of maple syrup, unlike authentic smoked barbecue. It takes 40 gallons of sap to produce one gallon of maple syrup.
The evaporator purchase was made possible, in part, to a $1,000 donation from the Greenfield Farmers Cooperative Exchange, where Jeff Budine, who represents Wendell of the FCTS Committee, works as manager. Budine said the cooperative considers donations to local organizations at the end of every business year. He said the Franklin County Community Development Corp. in Greenfield, Seeds of Solidarity in Orange, and Hawlemont Regional Elementary School also benefitted this year.
“We’re trying to support agriculture because that’s what we do here,” Budine said.
Richardson said the new evaporator rests under the school’s old “sheep shed,” which housed sheep when FCTS had an animal science shop.
Boiled sap comes out a tap into a pot that is brought inside to finish boiling on a propane burner. Students bottle the finished product and sell it to staffers and whoever else is interested. Richardson said some maple syrup is also presented to the school committee and some goes to the culinary arts program. Last year yielded the horticulture’s department’s largest production, at 18 gallons.
“I don’t think we’ll get there this year,” Richardson said, adding that the weather has been a bit “screwy” lately.
Reach DomenicPoli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 262.