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Tapping Trees in the Forest
Since early February, seniors in a Science Thesis Seminar class (STS) have been extracting sap from maple trees on campus. Tapping trees is a new project that hasn’t been done before at Woodberry. The class is being taught by physics and environmental science teacher Alex Tisch.
Mr. Tisch has spent the last few years researching how to tap maple trees, and this project was originally supposed to start last winter. However, tapping trees needs to be done when it's below freezing at night and above freezing during the day, which didn’t occur frequently enough last year.
“The goal is to collect the sap so that we can then make maple syrup. It typically takes 40 gallons of sap to yield one gallon of syrup,” said Mr. Tisch. The class currently has eight gallons of sap.
One of the challenges inherent in the process is boiling the sugar in the sap into syrup without burning it. Sap is made of 98 percent water and 2 percent sugar. To convert it into maple syrup, you keep the sap at 219 degrees. If you burn it, it crystallizes, but if you pour more sap in, it will decrystallize. The boiling process takes about five to six hours. Once the process is done, the class would need to bottle the new hot sap to prevent crystallization.
Bobby Hunter ’25 says he’s enjoying the experience, especially because nature is interesting and unique, and it’s fun being outside.
“We drill a hole into the tree and then insert the tap,” he said, describing their process. “We then connect a hose to a bucket and fasten it to the tap. The tree does the rest of the work in the right weather.”Mr. Tisch plans on continuing this project in the future, although he says he’ll make adjustments on refining the sap. Instead of using five buckets, he plans on tapping multiple trees and putting them into one bucket. In the future, he wants to start collecting sap from walnut and sycamore trees as well.
>> Reporting by Carlos Rivera Melgara ’25
Woodberry Forest School is an exceptional private school community for high school boys in grades nine through twelve. It is one of the top boarding schools in the United States and one of the only all-boys, all-boarding schools in the country.
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