On Saturday, February 1st, Merchantville's Maple Project held it's initial workshop and Sugar Maple tapping event. Over 65 adults and kids attended the session lead by Lindsey brown and Debbie Sommers fro The Stockton University Maple Project. The Stockton Maple Project continuously offers educational workshops to members of our local community and to educators in P-12 schools that incorporate science, sustainability, and reciprocity - a Native American and ecological concept focused on returning resources
to the environment after or before a harvest. After their presentation attendees went outside for tap training to learn how to drill, insert a tap and connect it to a sap collection bucket. Participants broke into 10 groups, grabbed buckets and supplies then, went to town tapping the Sugar Maple trees on public land in town! Each group will be checking their tree buckets daily and depositing sap from those buckets into larger storage barrels at the Community Center.
We will be attending an evaporator training session at Cape May Tech on Tuesday. We will be learning from Environmental Science & Sustainability teacher, Mike Adams, and his Junior and Senior level students. We hope to boil our first sap collection later this week.