Every Friday, a group of students gets a taste of New England when they travel about 10 miles north to the MacLeish Field Station, a 200-acre wooded parcel in rural Whately, Mass., owned by Smith. There, they set to work, hauling buckets into the snow-covered woods and collecting sap from the maple trees, which is used by a neighboring maple syrup distillery to make one of New England's most emblematic products.