“We’re Mutt and Jeff,” said Fred Burk about he and Gould Academy student, Jackie Yang, left, who has been learning about maple sugaring from Burk. Rose Lincoln

Gould Academy student, Jackie Yang, left, has been learning about maple sugaring from Fred Burk, of Newry. Burk sold Gould his evaporator and lines. Rose Lincoln

BETHEL — Growing up in Shenzhen, China, Jackie Yang had never tasted maple syrup before he came to Bethel.

Now he is leading the building of the Gould sugar house with the help of staffers, Jeremy Nellis and Jerry Bernier.

Part of Yang’s Four Point senior project included directing the transfer of all the sugaring equipment to the school from Fred Burk’s  Newry farm.

Yang has been learning how to sugar, too, from Burk, who he described as ‘quite a talker’ and a good teacher.

“It’s better than looking at things on YouTube or Google. If you have a question you can just ask him. He knows everything about maple syrup … it’s very different than writing a science paper,” said Yang, who has been out to Burk’s Newry mountain to see and learn about the maple trees and the sugaring process.

Burk describes Yang, a fast learner, and, “having a good gourd on his head.”

Together, said Burk, “we’re Mutt and Jeff.”

On a day too cold to cook sap, they do a test run with water through the shiny, 2′ X 6′ Leader evaporator Burk operated for 30 years and recently sold to the school. “It has all the bells and whistles” of  much bigger machine, said Burk. He told Head of School Tao Smith, “this is like buying a Porsche when the kids ought to be running a Volkswagen.”

Burk’s foray into maple sugaring started accidentally. It was mud season when his “boys” [two employees] had a skidder accident and hit the limb of a maple tree. They put a pan under the drip, set the sap on the stove and started boiling their first batch of syrup. By the time he retired he had 450-500 taps.

In the fall, Yang and other Gould students built the sugar house in the farm area behind the soccer field. Nellis and Bernier led the construction, which is nearly complete.  All the beams came from trees on Gould’s property. They used wooden pegs and milled and cut all the joinery themselves on Gould’s sawmill. The sheathing came from Hancock Lumber.

Two hundred and fifty acres of sugar woods line Gould’s side of Route 5,  but are separated from the sugar house by a stream. Using CAD and 3D design programs, eight students in a design thinking/small business class hoped to use gravity to get the sap across the stream to the sugar house. According to Nellis, their solution may or may not work. It will be close. The alternative is to truck the sap back to the school.

Whether they use sap from their own trees or borrow it from others, they hope to be able to to boil it in the sugar house when the weather is warmer.

In the late Spring, when Yang presents his sugaring project to the entire school he will invite Burk, “Hopefully he can come. That would make my presentation a lot funnier,” he said.