About 100 students from Moccasin Elementary School in Buchanan will be joining in on a 30-year tradition this month as they attend Maple Syrup Camp. Buchanan Community Schools teacher Melissa Frost is helping to run the camp this year and tells us the kids will start work on their own maple syrup next week.
“Our fourth grade students have the opportunity to tap maple trees at our school farm,” Frost said. “We have a maple syrup sap cooker so students get to tap the trees, help cook the sap, and collect sap. So it’s a great outdoor education experience.”
The school and its farm program are working with community partner Britney Martin, who helped find a neighborhood for trees to be tapped after the previous location became unavailable. She tells us people in the Tulip Tree Lane Neighborhood were willing to help.
“We have a lot of maple trees really close to the street, and a lot of our neighbors are actually retired Buchanan Community Schools teachers,” Martin said. “So I got together with my neighbors and we agreed to allow the students to come to our street and they will probably be tapping around 35 trees.”
That’ll happen between Monday and Wednesday. From there, sap will be collected daily by an outdoor educator and school farm caretakers over the course of the next month or so. Frost tells us this project is a 30-year tradition at Buchanan Community Schools.
“I teach at the high school and this is the number one memory that kids have coming from elementary school,” Frost said.
Once the maple syrup is all made, the school will hold a pancake breakfast for the students on March 28. After the pancake breakfast, any leftover maple syrup could be sent home with the students, although Frost says there usually isn’t much left over.
Frost says the annual Maple Syrup Camp is a great way for students to connect with the history of daily life here in Southwest Michigan going back 150 years.
