Indus classes take part in syrup-making operation

Every year Independent School District 363 School Board member and Indus School neighbor Gary Dougherty harvests maple sap from the sugar maple trees nearby to make into maple syrup.

The Indus fourth, fifth and sixth grade classes were invited to view his syrup-making operation recently, which is across from the school.

On March 29, students traveled north of the highway where Dougherty was already getting started drilling holes into the largest maple trees’ trunks. After the hole is drilled, a metal spigot is pounded into the trunk and a bag is hung overnight.

Upon return the next day, students were surprised to see that the bags they had hung had collected 2-4 quarts of maple sap.

Back at the house, Dougherty has created two stoves with an open-top tank resting above. These stoves are used to boil the maple sap down into maple syrup. Depending upon the temperature of the stoves, it takes about 15 hours to boil 35 gallons of sap into 1 gallon of syrup.

When the process is complete, Dougherty is left with a sweet and sticky 100 percent all-natural jar of maple syrup.

The kindergarten and first grade classes were shown how to tap a tree, where the syrup is cooked, and received a “downsized version” of the tapping process and how it tasted, also. Dougherty will bring ice cream and syrup for the students when the syrup is done being made.

Sixth grade teacher Bryan Brown commented, “The sixth grade students through their Minnesota history classes studied how the Native Americans did this, so they were able to experience it firsthand. Nothing like ‘hands on learning.’ The students were able to tap the trees themselves. They put ice cream pails under the taps.”