Intro to Maple Syrup Production Online
Tap into the Syrup Possibilities on Your Farm – Take Intro to Maple Syrup Production Online from the Cornell Small Farms Program
Maple syrup production is rapidly growing around the Northeast and offers a sound financial opportunity to utilize woodlots. Explore the range of possibilities for maple sugaring on your land — be it for supplemental income or for your livelihood — with our course, Intro to Maple Syrup Production: Sugaring for Profit.
Register Now: Intro to Maple Syrup Production
Along with helping you assess the potential for maple sugaring on your land, this course also covers “alternative” trees for production, including birch and black walnut. The content presented assumes the student has little past knowledge of sugaring, but a background in agriculture or forestry will be very helpful.
This course is for anyone exploring the feasibility of sugaring on their land. While the basics will be covered, many seasoned sugarmakers will benefit from the content, especially the new research that will be presented.
After completing this course, students will be able to:
- Identify the potential opportunities for producing maple sap and syrup on your land
- Develop and manage a forest stand for optimal maple sap production and long-term health and productivity
- Understand the costs and benefits of utilizing buckets, bags, gravity tubing, or vacuum enhanced tubing systems to gather sap
- Design a maple tubing system to achieve maximum sap yields in a cost-effective manner
- Understand the pros and cons and logistics of buying sap or leasing taps as a means of expanding your production
- Process sap into syrup in a cost-effective manner that is appropriate for the size of the operation
- Filter, package, and label maple syrup for sale according to the new grading system developed by the International Maple Syrup Institute
The bulk of the course happens on your own time, with discussions, readings and assignments in Teachable, our online course platform. To add to the experience, live webinars will be held during the live instruction period — from November 5 to December 17, 2020, on Thursday evenings at 7 p.m. ET (skipping the week of the Thanksgiving holiday). These webinars allow you to meet on a weekly basis to learn from presenters and ask questions in real-time. If you miss one, they are always recorded and posted for later viewing.
Meet the Instructor:
Adam Wild is a maple enthusiast, Director of Cornell University’s Uihlein Maple Research Forest, and co-director of the Cornell Maple Program. At the Uihlein Maple Research Forest, Adam does research within their 6,000+ commercial maple tap operation along with tapping and producing other tree syrups such as birch and beech. Previously Adam was an Assistant Professor of Plant Sciences at SUNY Cobleskill, where he developed and taught a course in maple syrup production. Adam has an M.S in Forest Ecology from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, where he did research on maple sap sweetness. Although Adam grew up on a livestock and vegetable farm, he is a first-generation maple farmer who started out tapping a couple of trees and has progressed to operating the commercial-scale operation at the Uihlein Forest.
Not Sweet on Sugaring? Check Out Other Upcoming Courses from the Cornell Small Farms Program
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Our suite of online courses are accessed on Teachable, a user-friendly platform that grants registrants permanent access to their course content. Also, courses have tiered pricing from $199 – $299, based on household size and income, to make access to the courses more affordable and equitable for everyone.
We offer more than 20 online courses to help farmers improve their technical and business skills. These courses cover a range of topics any farmer needs to succeed, such as beekeeping, holistic financial planning, soil health, social media, and so much more. Experienced farmers and extension educators guide students through course content, including weekly live webinars, videos, and resources.
You can browse all of our course offerings on our website.
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