Students at Auburndale Middle/High School Learn Maple Tree Tapping in the School Forest

Thursday, March 20th, 2025 -- 8:01 AM

(Bree Bylak, WSAW) Students at Auburndale Middle/High School learn maple tree tapping in their school forest as part of their Agriculture class in what the teacher says is a decent maple sap season.

According to Bree Bylak with WSAW, the Auburndale School Forest is currently filled with tree taps and lines collecting sap from maple trees around the land.

On school days, students come out to the forest to check on the older taps and start new ones. The students take the filled buckets at the base of older taps and pour the sap into the back of a tractor that transports it.

The students are also able to make new taps. They learn to listen to the best spot to drill and create a hole. Once the tap is placed, students use a refractometer to look at the sugar content in the sap.

Then, they either add a bag to collect the dripping sap, or connect a tube and add the sap line to the collection system students help design to use gravity to assist the sap to one bucket.

“The beauty of Maple and sharing Maple with kids is that it’s a labor-intensive project,” said Mark Cournoyer, Agriculture teacher at Auburndale Middle/High School.

“And this came back in January, we had a false spring and so the kids came out here and we enjoyed some snow and we enjoyed the sunshine and we got all of our lines. There’s about 3,500 feet of line that we have in our school forest.”

The students even get to taste the sweet sap coming from the tree. The bags slowly started to fill as soon as they were placed on the trees. “I like to call this my Wisconsin bucket list for the kids."

"Every kid in Wisconsin should know where Maple syrup comes from and know how to tap a tree,” said Cournoyer. The students said they think the outdoor and hands-on class style is a cool way to learn.

“I think I would like to learn a lot more about it and being with my grandma and grandpa, I think I’ll probably do it like when they’re done doing it, and we can keep having more syrup for the family,” said Aubree Neznik, a 7th grade student at Auburndale Middle School.

“Just like spending time outside and learning how to like tap trees like this is very enjoyable and it’s fun to learn about all this stuff,” said Ava Hasenrhrl, a 7th grader at Auburndale Middle School.

In April, the class will go back out to tear the lines down. In the meantime, they continue collecting sap and working with a local processor to cook collected sap into maple syrup.

“The boiling sap is like really unique to watch happen and not a lot of people can actually see it happen,” said Hasenrhrl. In labs for the class, students learn to make value-added maple products like maple jelly, maple nuts, and maple cream.

On Sunday, March 23, The Auburndale FFA is hosting their 65th annual Potato Pancake Feed. At the event, attendees can enjoy the school forest maple syrup along with some pancakes to support the FFA.

“We have 1,800 people and everyone has real Maple syrup on their pancakes," said Cournoyer. In the fall, the students learn to identify and mark the maple trees with pink ribbons so they are easier to find once the leaves have fallen.

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