Tree to Table: NMH Students Learn How to ‘Sugar” Over Spring Break

While the majority of the NMH community is off campus for spring break, a dedicated crew of day students and NMH farm staff has been working diligently to produce one of the school’s signature harvests: maple syrup.

The sugaring program provides students with the opportunity to learn the ins and outs of a time-honored New England tradition, said Farm Director Nancy Hanson. Student workers are involved throughout the process: collecting maple sap from numerous “sugar bushes” and taps around campus, refining and boiling the sap down into syrup, and bottling the end result for distribution.

“The level of competence they gain [is immense], from chucking wood in the fire to making the syrup,” said Hanson. “They’re here for an entire day, learning every bit of the process, and then teaching each other that process. It’s really a case of ‘Do one, teach one.’”

Sugaring lasts as long as the sap runs, Hanson said, which can range from a couple of weeks to more than a month, depending on temperatures and environmental conditions. The sugaring crew can bring in over 1,000 gallons of sap a day, which is run through a reverse-osmosis system to concentrate it before it’s placed into a wood-fired boiler system and filter setup. That sifts out impurities and burns off much of the water content, in addition to giving the syrup its signature brown color.

It takes about 45 gallons of maple sap to make one gallon of maple syrup, said Nate Johnson ’25, who’s in his second year on the sugaring crew.

“I didn't realize that you had to have so much sap – that's the thing that really blew my mind,” Johnson said. “We have three ‘bushes’ around campus, all with around 100 trees in them, and then we have buckets hung on trees all around campus.”

Some of the syrup the farm produces will be served to the community in Alumni Hall, while some will be offered for sale to alumni, parents, and others in the extended NMH network.

“We've been completely out of syrup since Christmas,” Hanson said. “I get phone calls every day from people asking when we’ll have more, so we're trying to bottle as much as we can to keep the alums and parents happy.” 

A full week on the sugaring crew – each day starts at 8 or 9 in the morning and lasts until 4 in the afternoon – allows day students to gain workjob credits, as well to get an up-close-and-personal look at one of the farm’s most beloved operations.

“I think there's two main things that make sugaring here so special,” said Adam Finke, the assistant farm manager. “One is you get to see a process from start to finish in the course of a week. Due to the nature of the school year, it's hard for a lot of our [regular] workjob students to see all the steps in a project. With sugaring, they can point at a bottle of syrup and say ‘I did every step in this.’”

The nature of the work also gives students a chance to forge a personal connection with the natural landscape around them, said Finke.

“It's the beginning of the spring – all the signs of life are coming out, and it's at a time where they've spent all this time indoors in the winter,” Finke noted. “I think that's the real value: to connect students with the process of getting their own food and having that powerful, connective experience with nature.”

Jacob Wyatt ’28 was intrigued by how each part of the sugaring process plays an essential role in the overall product.

“I like how many stages it goes through and how each of those steps are just simple science, coming together in a super simple way,” he said.

Working on the sugaring crew has given Daein Kim ’28 a greater appreciation for the time and work involved in making maple syrup.

“In my head, it’s like, ‘Yeah, you tap a tree and then it's maple syrup,’” Kim said. “I didn't realize how intricate the whole thing was. The sheer amount of stuff that it takes to make it is kind of nuts.”

Sugaring is an opportunity to participate in locally-sourced agriculture and to focus on a singular process without outside distractions, said Nadine Neutra ’28.

“It gives you an appreciation for the land and how you can stop feeding into the big food conglomerates of the world and see what you have right here,” she said. “I feel like, especially in a modern world with a lot of distractions, there's so much joy you can get from this. It’s a nice, natural way to feel satisfied.”

Hanson concurred, noting that while the process can be chaotic at times, the sugaring experience allows students to apply the things they’ve learned in the classroom to a real-world situation.

“Sugaring is agricultural science, but it's also botany, thermodynamics, chemistry,” Hanson said. “It's food with deep historical and cultural significance – it really ticks all the boxes.”

NMH Farm Maple Syrup can be purchased through the NMH Farm webpage.

Photos by Matthew Cavanaugh Photography and Max Hunt. See more photos from spring break sugaring on Flickr.