By Rose Lovett
This maple season, students in our Farm-to-School programs had lots of fun learning about maple sugaring and incorporating local syrup into recipes they prepared in the classroom. Many also attended field trips to local maple sugar houses to further their hands-on learning – tapping trees, observing boiling, and enjoying sugar on snow!
Local sugar houses visited include: Colburn’s Sugar House (in Orleans), Couture’s Sugar House (in Newport), Covered Bridge Maple (in Barton), Fradette’s Sugarhouse (in Craftsbury), Jed’s Maple (in Derby), Little Charlie’s Sugar House (in Jay), as well as a couple non-commercial home sugaring operations. To prepare to facilitate these field trips our Farm-to-School Coordinators attended training at Judd’s Wayeese Farms and Osborne Family Maple where the owners gave tours and walked the team through the sugaring process from start to finish. We are grateful for all our community partners who opened up their sugar houses to our local students and shared this Vermont tradition with the next generation!
