A Tasty Lesson in Entrepreneurship

With ample trees across our 60 acres, an annual treat for fourth-grade students in their outdoor education class is the pancake party, during which they get to celebrate and taste maple syrup sourced from Country Day’s sugar maple trees. Lower School students begin tapping the trees in January and help collect, filter, and boil the sap throughout the maple season, which lasts until the beginning of March. 

While learning about the process, Gavin Terhar `33 had an idea: What if the school bottled and sold the maple syrup?

“I thought it would be a good way to promote our school and let others, like parents and teachers, try the maple syrup. So, Summer [Saud ‘33] and I worked with Mrs. [Jana] Westhoven to come up with a plan because it was supposed to be a big maple season this year.” 

This year, the fourth grade collected 72 gallons of sap from the trees tapped by each Lower School classroom. “I think Ms. [Prissy] Schoeny’s class probably had the best tree for sap production. It looked the most alive, it was further from the road, and closest to a water source,” says Gavin.

The students then worked with Jana, the school’s outdoor education teacher, to process the sap and bottle it as maple syrup.

Summer and Gavin pulled in Allan Li `33 to help with sales, advertising, and setting up the shop for Lower School Curriculum Night. Their 48-bottle inventory sold before the evening was over, and they made $238 in sales. 

“It was cool to work with the cash, but it was also stressful because our shop was busy right away,” says Summer. “I also liked visiting everyone on campus to make it happen. And it was cool to learn how to tap maple trees – I’ve never done that before.”

So, what’s next?

“We will use the money we made to buy next year’s supplies and help next year’s fourth graders by showing them what they need to do and how to do it,” says Gavin. “Maybe we can even help interview the fourth graders to see who can be in charge of production, because even though it was fun, it was a lot of work. It was worth it, though; more people got to try the maple syrup, which we named ‘Country Day Maple’ and that’s pretty cool.”

Article written by Chelsey Combs, college intern