Maple Weekend celebrated in Oneida County

On March 28 and 29, Vernon-Verona-Sherrill High School FFA Chapter celebrated a longstanding tradition with Oneida County’s official maple weekend ceremony. It also celebrated the first crop of the year to be harvested – maple syrup.

The VVS FFA students served approximately 2,000 pancake breakfasts with real maple syrup. The students process the sap into syrup in the school’s sugarhouse from the 1,000 taps in the school’s maple orchard.

All of the taps are on modern vacuum and pipeline, where the sap is processed through a reverse osmosis unit to remove the water to reduce boiling time. Then it is boiled down on a modern evaporator that burns biomass wood chips that are also grown and harvested on school property.

The event is a major fundraiser for their FFA projects and trips throughout the year. They also sell a variety of maple products at the school and at community events, as well as at the Remsen Barn Festival in September.

At the ceremony many Oneida County elected officials and community leaders were on hand and quite supportive of this wonderful program and event.

I, Farmer Ben, a past FFA chapter reporter, would like to take this opportunity to say that modern FFA chapters are not just for future farmers – FFA has transformed into a leadership program for students of all different backgrounds that share a common interest in agriculture.

This was an outstanding annual event with great food to share with friends and neighbors and it supports a great organization.

by Ben Simons