Vision

From its creation in 2017 the Almaguin Maple project has worked to provide students in our Education and Community Partner Programs with experiential learning opportunities through sustainable industry. We strive to inspire the entrepreneurial spirit within our students in all phases of yearly maple syrup production, from planning sap runs, predicting end harvest amounts to marketing and sales. Our hope is that the students take the skills learned while working in the sugar bush and apply them to their lives outside of school.

Action

We have been expanding our program and have gone from 30 taps and buckets collected by hand daily to 180 taps on lines that are collected from central tanks once a week. Our hope is to one day build a sustainable sugar shack on site so that we can process and bottle our own product. As we move forward we are looking at designing and implementing a solar powered pump system that can pump our sap from our central holding tanks to a transport tank so it can be taken to our community partner.

Reflection & Celebration

This year we collected more sap than we ever have before bringing in just over 5500L of sap that will translate into roughly 155L of finished syrup. The funds we have brought in from syrup sales over the past two years have allowed us to buy the materials to build a storage shed for all of our maple syrup gear. The shed will be designed and built by our senior construction class.