Festival brings back sweet traditions

Br. Walter Kieffer has been making St. John’s maple syrup since 1962 when he volunteered to help tap trees during his sophomore year at the prep school.

Now, in his 61st year bottling the coveted golden syrup, Kieffer was able to once again share his work with students when the Maple Syrup Festival was up and running this weekend for the first time since 2019.

Over 200 students gathered in the Sugar Bush—a mile behind the New Science lot—on Saturday, March 26 to sample syrup in its many forms, tour the Sugar Shack, explore tree tapping in the arboretum, learn about syruping science from biology students and enjoy a hot drink by a bonfire.

“I really like seeing other people excited about how syruping works…seeing other students come out wanting to learn more about it and being excited about the whole process that’s unique to our campus is really cool,” said Chloe Anderson, an Outdoor University student naturalist who helped run the festival.

Outdoor U’s annual Maple Syrup Festival was unable to run in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic. This year, the festival was held with attendance limited to CSB/SJU students instead of the broader community.

“We weren’t ready to have 1000 people out here but we still wanted to give students the opportunity to come out and experience [the festival], especially juniors and seniors who may not get another opportunity,” Outdoor U director Kyle Rauch said.

Seniors like Avery Paulsen were grateful for an opportunity to witness the sweet tradition. Paulsen was unable to attend during her first year at CSB, and with the cancellation of the festival the last two years, this weekend was one of her last opportunities to sample St. John’s maple syrup, which is only available at Outdoor U events and the monastery.

The highlight of the festival for fellow CSB senior Kori Pekarek was learning from other students.

“I really like how hands-on it is in the demonstration and how they let us participate in things, and it’s really cool how student-run it is,” Pekarek said. “People our age being so knowledgeable about these things is really cool.”

Much of this knowledge came from Rauch’s biology students presenting at the festival.

Rauch teaches a one-credit course over the B and C mods that explores the science of maple syrup. The students presented their syrup-inspired research to festival-goers throughout the day. The research included the health benefits of maple syrup, effects of climate change on maple syrup, grading of maple syrup, a comparison of syrup science and honey science, non-maple syrups in the arboretum and a station turning the syrup into maple taffy.

The research project allowed students to find an intersection between their personal interests and St. John’s maple syrup.

For senior Eli Mollet, the sweet spot was honey.

Mollet grew up keeping bees at his home in South Dakota where his family harvests honey from their many beehives.

This led Mollet and his groupmates Julia Nguyen and Sophie Stoffers to research the difference in sugar composition between syrup and honey. Their findings showed that while honey and syrup both start in the same sugar composition, bee digestion turns honey into a longer-lasting source of sweetener.

An overlap between interests and maple syrup was not hard to find for senior environmental studies major Con Brady. Brady has been helping with the syruping process since his first year at SJU, and his passion even led him once to drink seven ounces of the syrup plain.

His research focused on a danger to his precious syrup: climate change.

“Climate change is a bad deal already, so when it affects syrup it’s especially bad,” Brady said.

Brady’s research showed that changes in temperature can shorten the tapping season, freeze maple roots and kill trees as invasive species move north.

Despite the effects of climate change, the future of St. John’s maple syrup looks promising this season.

According to Rauch, the arboretum’s maple trees have produced 43 gallons of syrup so far, and the extended forecast looks promising for a big syrup-producing week ahead. For the sap to run, the temperature has to be above freezing during the day and below freezing at night.

The 43 gallons of syrup is no small feat as it takes about 40 gallons of sap to produce one gallon of syrup. St. John’s syrup is created the old-fashioned way as sap collection is done without pumps and the Sugar Shack runs without electricity. Once the 800 gallons of sap required to run the evaporator—named “Big Bernie” after Kieffer’s middle name—is collected, a wheelbarrow full of wood is put in the stove every 10 minutes until the day’s syrup production is done.

This hard work of the Outdoor U and maple syrup volunteers paid off this weekend with the showing of student support at the festival.

“I’m so happy students are showing up on a cold windy day,” Rauch said. “Everyone seems to be…smiling—a warm drink and some sugar and everyone’s going to be happy.”