Students from La Motte school produce their own maple syrup

This spring tradition started 8 years ago. Artist Marie-Hélène Massy Émond had noticed the five silver maple trees on the school grounds. She then suggested making a project of them and cutting them with the students.

Although it’s not sugar maples, it works. The difference is that it takes 40 liters of maple sap instead of 20 to produce one liter of syrup. It is a syrup of very good quality, it is a syrup which is tasty. She therefore initiated my colleague Mélodie (Pépin) and me to tap the maple trees each spring and collect the water to make syrup.explains Marie-France Leclerc, who teaches the 5th and 6th grade group.

The notched maples are provided with seals, which are in fact reused plastic bottles.

Photo: Radio-Canada / Martin Guindon

Holder of the 4th year group, Mélodie Pépin also teaches science. She is therefore the one who explains to the students the entire process of harvesting maple sap in the spring, the factors that affect production and how this water is transformed into syrup.

Tapping and harvesting by students

It is the students who cut the trees, then collect the maple sap every day during the sugaring off season.

“We take a drill, we make a hole in the tree. Then we take a small pipe, we put it in the tree, we lean the board on the pipe and with the hammer, we knock. We make a hole in the bottle and we hang it,” summarizes Camille Audet, a 4th grade student.

Camille Audet and Milan Roch show here some of the tools used for tapping maple trees during our visit at the beginning of April.

Photo: Radio-Canada / Martin Guindon

Every day, we harvest water. And if it’s not full enough, we just watch and leave. If it’s full enough, we take them and bring them to make maple syrupcontinues Milan Roch, his classmate.

We take it to the teachers, the teachers boil it. We boiled it and tasted it, it was good. It wasn’t quite maple syrup yet, but it was sweeter than thatadds Camille.

At the end, we will make maple syrup and either we will eat pancakes or maple taffysays Milan.

Students pour the contents of the seals into bottles, then hand them to teachers in the school to boil the contents.

Photo: Radio-Canada / Martin Guindon

Time to taste

All that remains now is to taste the transformed fruit from their splendorous harvest, which has made it possible to produce nearly 20 liters of syrup. The school’s 50 or so students will soon be tasting their syrup on squash waffles.

Everyone can harvest, everyone processes and everyone tastes. Last year, we made pancakes and coated our pancakes with maple syrup. One year, we did taffy on the snow. Before the pandemic, we concocted little maple cones with the parents. We try to make a different menu every year. The children are looking forward to this momentassures Marie-France Leclerc.

Harvested maple sap is poured here into a boiling cauldron, here by Bastien Nadon and Logan Roy.

Photo: Radio-Canada / Martin Guindon

A threatened tradition?

If the maples of the Tétreault school are mature, they should still allow the tradition to continue for several more years. In fact, the real threat to this tradition lies elsewhere, according to teacher Marie-France Leclerc.

What scares us is the new school project. They were talking about parking here, so we don’t know what will happen. We want to keep our project and at least reach our 20 years of production. Are we going to have to chain ourselves to trees to keep them? Maybe by simply talking about our project, by making it shine, maybe we’ll be able to save our maple trees.she wishes.