Potomac State College President Jerry Wallace learns how to tap the College's maple trees.
The 2026 sugar maple harvesting season at WVU Potomac State College is coming to a close.
Like the wines of Southern California or the South of France, like whiskey production in Tennessee, and even corn or soybean production here in the Appalachian Mountains, every production cycle has its season. And the season for what will be known as the 2025-2026 Catamount Syrup Vintage is ready to be capped, corked, labeled, and stored.
It’s a long and patient process that began some months ago, in the dead of winter, and just as the campus was reopening after holiday break.
“It’s two months’ worth of work,” said Donna Ballard, professor of horticulture, plant and soil sciences, and the PSC Director of Farms. “We normally start in December and then regroup in January, and then we tap the trees and then wait for the maple sap to start running.”
The maple trees on the farm property were tapped in mid-February by agricultural and forestry majors and student volunteers. That tapping involved drilling a small hole in the tree trunk and inserting a spile with a light-blue PVC tube into it. The light blue color is intentional, reportedly fooling predators intent on chewing through the tube to feast on the sticky, sweet sap. That hole is then sealed to deter unwanted visitors, such as squirrels, from using the hose as if it were a tap on a soft-serve ice cream machine.
Sap from Potomac State College's sugar bush travels down the mountain through plastic tubing.
Over the next few weeks, gravity then takes over, allowing the maple water to flow naturally from the more than 100 viable maple trees on the farm property into a holding tank in the rear of the Sugar Shack. Once the 900-gallon tank is nearly full, staff and students open a valve, allowing the maple water to drip slowly, like a household faucet left open during a freeze warning. Emptying the outside tank into the indoor evaporator takes an entire day.
Maple water collected for sampling at Potomac State College
The maple water is captured in a reverse osmosis tank, where the water is separated from the sugar. The liquid itself is boiled and extracted from the sugar, creating a scent from the building not unlike that of baking yeast, pretzels, or pizza dough from an oven. It is a scent that Stephen Collette, a student who works the equipment, said some find familiar for other reasons.
“The machine the maple sugar is in is very much like how beer is distilled, so a lot of people say the smell reminds them of what a brewery or distillery smells like when they walk into it,” he said.
Once the reverse osmosis process and evaporation are complete and the water has been removed from the sugar, what most people know as maple syrup – with its lovely translucent golden color – is evident and is what remains in the tanks. The yield is about 10 percent of what went into the tank at the start of the process. In other words, four hundred gallons of maple water, when finally processed through the stainless-steel evaporator, produce forty gallons of pure West Virginia-made maple syrup.
“When it gets to that point, the syrup is in concentrate form, and that is the form most people recognize as maple syrup,” Collette said.
The visible, constant lines of steam from the building's chimney stacks are vapor from the sugar as water is removed and evaporated from the syrup.
Dr. Donna Ballard uses a reflectometer to inspect a sample of the maple water for consistency and clarity.
This is a department and a process unlike any other taught on a college campus outside the New England states, said Ballard. “Potomac State is very unique with this,” she said. “It’s a very unique workshop. It amounts to a very intensive lab experience.”
But when does maple season officially end? That is not up to those who monitor and work on the equipment, Collette says. That is up to Mother Nature.
“We can keep going until the trees start to bud,” he said. “Once that happens, we need to stop. Because in order for the trees to bud, they need the moisture that we are pulling from it. If we didn’t stop when the tree started to bud, we would dehydrate and starve the tree, and then it would be no use to us next year.”
“We usually try to watch the weather and start the process about a month and a half before the trees are supposed to bud,” said Ballard. “We are constantly out here watching those trees. As soon as the trees tell us it’s time to start, we get started.”
The peak season for maple syrup production is also determined by nature and tends to be a waiting game. Patience is a virtue when it comes to harvesting and processing maple syrup.
“The maple trees do have a peak season, and nobody knows when that is for sure until it happens. So when it happens, we get to work,” Ballard said. “Peak season depends on elevation, atmosphere, and weather conditions, and how cold the winter has been.” A longer and colder winter will produce a longer maple syrup harvesting season.
Sustainable Agricultural Entrepreneurship major Stephen Collette checks the progress of the maple water in the reverse osmosis evaporator
This was Collette’s second year tapping the trees and producing the syrup in the Sugar Shack facility. “I really had never done this before until last year,” said Collette. “I was teaching math at a school nearby and decided to come back to school and get a degree in Sustainable Agricultural Entrepreneurship. Now this year, I am teaching again because I am teaching other people how to do this. I do enjoy teaching this to people. It’s fun.”
“Maple syrup production is listen, learn, and then teach,” added Ballard.
Inside the evaporator, the water is separated from the sugar, eventually creating maple syrup
The production of maple syrup itself is a time-honored tradition, handed down from generation to generation. The only change has been the addition of modern equipment to make production less labor-intensive and more cost-efficient.
“Folks have been making maple syrup for generations,” Ballard says. “They have made it in kettles in their backyards over an open flame to what we are doing today. The method has stayed the same. The only thing that has changed has been the equipment.”
The finished product: a former “vintage” of maple syrup, made on the Gustafson Farm
Eventually, the syrup is poured from the evaporator and into a 40-gallon steel keg. The keg is then transported to the commercial kitchen on the Gustafson property, where students process, bottle, and label it. Since the product is then distributed into pint jars, the College can expect to add an average of 320 pints to its inventory during a typical maple syrup production season.
While only 100 trees are currently used for maple syrup production, the campus farm has 1,500 maple trees on the property. Any of those could be used in the future.
“We will add as we go,” Ballard said. “We are only limited here by our available labor. And that labor is provided by our students. If we decided to add in all 1,500 trees, we would need about 400 student volunteers out here working every day.”
Because the College only produces so much syrup from a limited number of trees, each year the “vintage” is considered limited. What gets produced in one season is all that will get produced for the year.
The program was initially started in 2017 by Eddie Hartman of New Creek, WV, who proposed the idea. Then, with the assistance of Corey Armstrong, who taught at PSC at the time, they applied for and received a grant that helped purchase the necessary equipment.
Shifting institutional priorities paused the program for a time, so when the program was restarted, current instructors and students entered a building with all the equipment in place and “had to learn from scratch,” said Ballard. The department enlisted the assistance of regional maple syrup producers for initial expertise. Last year, students were able to produce their first batch “untethered” from outside help.
“Agriculture is what this College was once known for, for producing amazing farmers and people who knew how to get the most out of the land,” Ballard said. “That hands-on day-to-day learning is something we got away from years ago, and we are just now getting back to it.”
Does maple syrup from Potomac State College, in the foothills of the ancient Appalachian Mountains, taste different than syrup produced in places more renowned for its syrup production, like Vermont?
According to Ballard, the reply is a resounding yes.
“It’s called the Terrior, which is actually French and used first for wine-making grapes,” she said. “A grape at the same temperature and atmosphere in France will taste different than a grape raised under the same conditions in California. And that is because of the soil contents, the water the plant received, and the climate in which the grapes were raised. The same is true for maple trees and maple syrup. Each region will taste just slightly different.”
And can real connoisseurs of maple syrup tell?
“Oh yes,” she said. “You have heard of wine snobs, right? There are maple syrup snobs, and they know the difference.”
Is Ballard one of them?
“I will never tell,” she said.
March is designated as National Agriculture Month in the United States, dedicated to recognizing the vital role farmers, ranchers, and agribusinesses play in producing food, fiber, fuel, and their agricultural contributions to the economy and daily life. In its 125th anniversary year, WVU Potomac State College celebrates its rich history of educating leaders in the agriculture industry.