Ithaca College South Hill Maple Syrup

by Breanne Durning
5/12/10

Sweet Success

History

Three Ithaca College graduates, Chris Shapiro, Charles Tonks, Ben O’neil, decide to start making maple syrup. Because they didn’t have the proper equipment, they worked out an agreement with a local commercial producer; the students collected the sap on the property they still use today. Shapiro, O’Neil and Tonks used the commercial sugar shack and to produce the syrup, they had to give up half of what they produced to the owner.

The site of the syrup production today is located on Ithaca College property. One can access it by going down Coddington road and it’s the fourth right, it’s called Rich Road. It’s a dead-end, students and maple syrup enthusiasts must park their car and venture into the woods a couple of yards.

“The physical plant made us a trail, which we didn’t have the first year. And that allows us to get all our production materials out there and get the sap back much easier,” said Tyler Glassman, a senior business administration major.

“The following year they were not down for that and they wanted to be able to make their own. So they got involved with Jason Hamilton and he setup, an independent study, and they asked me to come along with it to do the marketing and sales, but I ended up doing some producing because they wanted me to take it over next year. So I had to learn how to do it,” said senior business and market major, Rachel Glassberg.

In order for the IC students to construct a sugar shack at the maple syrup site, they would need to receive funding from the school, or raise enough money to cover all the costs.

“They realized is that it was going to cost them over $10,000 to make a sugar shack, and in order to do that we needed to sell a lot of maple syrup. So we started from there. Last year was the official first year of South Hill Maple Syrup, where we were actually producing boiling on our own land, and not have to give any of our maple syrup away,” said Glassberg.

“We wanted this to be a class,” continued Glassberg, explaining that professor Jason Hamilton of the Central for Natural Sciences, help to give this independent study structure. Hamilton often visited the students out at the syrup site. His lesson on the first day, how to identify a sugar-maple tree: “If you notice the bark splits side to side, it peels at the edges,” Hamilton said placing his hand on the tree’s trunk. “A maple tree’s branches are opposite, so if you have the side-splitting bark and the opposite branch growth, 99 percent sure you are standing in front of a maple tree.”

This Year’s Results

“Last year we produced about 1.86 gallons, and this year it’s hard to tell, because we were dealing with people who had never done this before. We originally had maybe two gallons. We had to re-boil a lot of it because it was boiled incorrectly, it was cloudy syrup and we didn’t want to sell anything that was below par. We tapped double the trees, we wanted more people to be able to get the syrup.”

“This year is not quite exactly what I expected,” Glassberg pauses, “I mean, very proud of everything we did, we got as much syrup as we possibly could. One other person, Tyler Glassman, who was involved in the group when the guys originally started with John Conifer, he also helped out, between him and I, we were the only two who knew anything about making maple syrup or about maple syrup in general,” a smile breaks across Glassberg face.

“People who signed up and participated had no idea that syrup came from trees and you had to go to the woods to do that. So as far as how much people learned and our outcome, I think I’m happy with that,” she said.

Rrecruitment for Next Year/Future of South Hill Maple Syrup

“I feel like it wasn’t as advertised as well prior to us doing the project. But that was also part of our job as a business, trying to market our product and I think that has improved throughout the semester. We had people working the marketing for it and we did try to spread the word more,” said Glassman, reflecting on the students.

“The more people we can get with the different experiences the better I think it would be. It would be better if we could get people who liked being out doors, and have started fires, and into science experiments,” Glassberg says of the future successors of South Hill Maple Syrup.

“I’m glad that it was offered as an environmental research class, and that I got to participate in it and I hope that it gains popularity. It seemed that it was starting to gain popularity. Hopefully kids sign up and keep it going. I would like to see it continue throughout the years and keep on growing and keep on improving and maybe tapping more trees,” Glassman smiles talking of South Hill Maple Syrup’s future.

The South Hill Maple syrup crew ran a successful open house, inviting all faculty, students, and community members alike. Flyers for maple syruping can be found at the entrance way of CNS and the Park business school.

Glassman admits, “It was lacking in previous years. It was only really known by people we knew, word-of-mouth kind of thing.”

But now a possible future is in store for this class.

“I have had several people ask me when the class was being offered, my goal is to get as many people psyched about this project. I have spent so much time and energy into this, I want to see it get stronger, gain momentum,” Glassberg said, her hand clenches to a fist.

Diversity of Majors

Out of the ten students whom have participated in this independent study, seven different majors are represented, sociology, philosophy/religion, biology, history, business administration, and international business.

“Andrew is studying the effects of tapping trees, so he is working on his own individual project. He’s a biology major, so every time we collect the sap we measure how much in inches, so that in the end we can conclude you know certain trees, measure how much sap we got throughout the season, add it all up. Then we can start analyzing whether or not the circumference or location of the tree will make a difference in how much sap the tree is going to make. So that in future years we can decide on trees that will produce the most sap for us,” said Anna Halperin, a senior music education major at IC.

Sugar Shack

So what the boys, Shapiro, O’neil, and Tonks set out to accomplish, and what most maple syrup people have is what is called a sugar shack. This is a building that, depending on the producer, how much money they have and what they care about, it could be a nice place, or just look like a shack, it doesn’t even need four walls.

A sugar shack is a building with a roof, but having walls would allow the wind to be blocked, which would make producing maple syrup easier, especially cause you could do it in the rain, or the snow, and its warm.

“I mean when you’re sitting out there for twelve hours it’s pretty cold in Ithaca weather, you would like something to block the wind or retain heat into the building even if it’s not insulated. The benefits of a sugar shack, you could produce all the syrup at one place. For us we had to bring the syrup inside to Jason lab in order to precisely finish it,” Glassberg said.

Community Involvement

“The more people we have, we could produce a lot of syrup and we could sell it in the community. Personally when I got into this I wrote a marketing plan to be able to sell in various stores outside the people we know, and outside of Ithaca College Campus. But the fact is you need to produce X amount of bottles that you could give to a distributor. They’re not going to buy a product if you can only give it to them once,” Glassberg talks of the Ithacan residents.

“I want this project to outlive me, I want it to surpass all my expectations,” said Glassberg, reflecting on her upcoming graduation from Ithaca College. “I want to tell my children about it.”