Winter Term athletes took advantage of a rare off day (rain can’t stop us, Mother Nature!) to pair up some dryland training with an awesome trip to the Cornell-Uihlein Maple Syrup Farm, just around the corner from the OTC. Mike Farrell (Husband of Winter Term Mathematics Professor Emeritus Andrea Farrell) gave us a fantastic tour of the facility, which is now in full production mode with warm temps a-plenty.
Listen up. Maple syrup is a big deal.
Over 72 miles of vacuum pressured tubing connect the Maple and Birch trees behind the OTC. Who knew?! That sure doesn’t suck…
Tubing galore! The main vein. 100 years ago this forest was leveled to turn maple trees into charcoal. Today it has regrown… and it produces awesome syrup!
Trees can be tapped every season. Yup! 40 gallons of sap to one gallon of syrup. Quite a ratio!
U14 ladies try not to fall into the sap collection vats
Where air is released from the vacuum lines, and sap is filtered pre-boiling.
#Grade-A #dagoodstuff
Samples. Yeah, they’re all delicious.
Noice.
The evaporator! So awesome!
#Fancy
The sap boiled over! It was wild! Thankfully no persons (or pancakes) were harmed. A really sticky situation…

 

Testing! This rocked. So fresh.
The fruits of our labor…
How sweet is this?