Non-Timber Forest Products is unlike any other class at Ithaca College. As students, we get to run our own business from top to bottom: researching, designing, creating, and selling products to the Ithaca community! We make hand-carved wooden utensils, salves, candles, and more… but our main attraction is our maple syrup! We tap local trees in the IC Natural Lands and boil our syrup over a wood-burning fire out in the woods! Students monitor the boil around the clock and manage every aspect of syrup production. We get to become trained, career-ready experts in a practice that is estimated to be over 400 years old! Check out this vlog about this year's experience.
Anna Fluhler (’26) jumped head-first into the class. “I’ve done a lot of wood burning and carving,” Fluhler said, “There’s enough people and enough things to do that … there’s something for everyone.”
Abe Marron (’28), and ENVS major and history and education studies minor, said he learned how to make many different products, such as salves and dyes. “It’s been a lot of work,” Marron said, “but it’s been worth it.”
We had record attendance at our annual Open House on April 18! Over 330 people stopped by the sugarbush to see our team in action. We sold out of our maple syrup long before the end of our Open House, and we were thrilled to offer a host of activities for our visitors to try. Thank you for stopping by, and we’ll see you next year!
