South Hill Forest Products is a project at Ithaca College changing the way students learn about and appreciate the environment. It’s offers a variety of high quality products that are made by students in the Environmental Studies lab at the college.

We spoke to a student who has been been extremely active in contributing to their productivity. Isabelle, a senior at Ithaca College and is now majoring in Environmental Science. She explained that the business is run by students taking a course entitled “Selected Topics in Natural Resources and Ecology: Farming the Forest.”

When she first joined the class she “was a biochemistry major with the intention of going to medical school after college”. She was initially placed in the class due to a “mixup” with her schedule.

South Hill Forest Products sells maple syrup, honey, soap, salves, fire starting kits, hickory syrup and dried oyster mushrooms. It began in 2007 with a small group of students producing maple syrup.

The project has expanded, and now boasts over 100 maple syrup taps, two edible mushroom farms and over half a dozen beehives. The program provides a hands on education in how to create “all natural non-timber forest products” and sell them too.

The experience has proven to be a rewarding one as Isabelle described how “tapping the maple trees was actually my first experience getting to use power tools, and being a woman it can be really difficult to get opportunities to learn this set of skills. Just a few short weeks later [she was] able to assist in the building of a green house”.

“This class helped me discover a new part of myself, with the eventual realization that I should be doing something completely different with my life.”

Tapping maple trees is only a small part of the work because she also helped to inoculate, grow, dehydrate and package shiitake mushrooms. She learned to carve wooden spoons and butter knives and even ended up learning a bit of coding as she contributed to putting finished products onto the South Hill Forest Products website for sale.

Although students will eventually package and sell consumer products like syrup, working with South Hill Forest Products teaches students to be thankful and sustainable when farming the forest.

Before explaining how the syrup is cultivated and processed, Isabelle made it clear that “tapping a maple tree is not something to be taken lightly, and it is important to give respect to the maple trees and to thank them for giving us these resources.”

Finding ways to utilize natural resources without harming wildlife is an ongoing struggle, but forest farming and non timber forest products are a step in the right direction. By showing young people how to profit from the cultivation and production of NTFP’s, Ithaca College is providing an economically viable skill set for environmentally conscious students that is ecologically sustainable as well. In the process students are given a hands on and holistic education in resource extraction and sustainability while also developing a business acumen from first hand experience.

For Isabelle, working with South Hill Forest Products was more than a class – it was a valuable experience. “This class helped me discover a new part of myself, with the eventual realization that I should be doing something completely different with my life.” The revenue generated by South Hill Forest Products is used to pay for the next year’s class so it seems the environmentally friendly student run business will be farming the forest for years to come.