PLYMOUTH, Wis. — It takes a village to tap maple trees, but the Riverview 7th-grade students were up for the challenge Monday afternoon at City Park in Plymouth.
There are about 75 maple trees in the area.
With buckets and tools in hand, the group of 60 split up to tap sap.
“There are lines of sap running up and down the trees. And then when you drill a hole about two to three inches deep, that’s where the sugar line is,” explained 7th-grader Brooklyn Hron.
She was one of dozens of students participating in the effort Monday, but it wasn’t her first rodeo.
Hron told me she taps trees with her family each season, so she helped lead others through the process.
“I think too often we forget that nature is here and the beauty of it and what nature can give us and produce for us,” said Barbara Drewry-Zimmerman, committee member of the Plymouth Maple Association.
Drewry-Zimmerman’s family has been perfecting the syrup-making process earlier than the Civil War.
Now, she’s passing her knowledge to the next generation.
Watch: Plymouth students sap tap trees as part of community-wide maple effort
“Teaching them more about good food, good eating,” Drewry-Zimmerman said. “But just seeing their enthusiasm of being outside…that’s important.”
This year, the community has a special way to process the collected sap—the newly constructed Sugar Shack.
“The neat thing is students from our construction class actually built the structure,” explained John Nelson, another member of the Plymouth Maple Association. “It was quite an effort, and they really did a fantastic job.”
The shack is 100 percent solar-powered and complete with a filtration system called an evaporator.
The sap is heated with a wood fire to evaporate the excess water. Then the steam is released through the windows above.
"Forty gallons of sap makes one gallon of syrup," Nelson noted, so it’s no wonder they needed to call in reinforcements.
“Use it on your waffles or whatever you want…pancakes,” 7th-grader Riley Baysinger smiled.
I asked her which meal she’d prefer to top with maple syrup.
“Waffles,” she responded. “I had them this morning.”
The sap was too frozen to flow on Monday, but the students said they still had a blast.
A group of volunteers will check the buckets in a few days. Any syrup produced from the collected sap will likely be sold at the Plymouth Maple Festival next year.
“We’re hoping to sell the syrup to the community and use that money to kick back to the city’s recreational programs,” Nelson said.
The 2025 festival is scheduled for April 5.
Drewry-Zimmerman: “It’s just a wonderful time to bring the community together.”
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