Latest news with #MapleMadness
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Sweet relief arrives this spring with events celebrating Vermont's maple-syrup season
You can have your Daylight Saving Time or your dwindling snow banks or your red-winged blackbirds or your sprouting daffodils. Vermonters know the real first sign of approaching spring is when they hear the words 'the sap is running.' Sugaring season hits the senses hard. The sugar house gives off sweet scents and warm vibes as that maple-tree goo gets boiled down into syrup. And of course the taste buds celebrate the rite of spring by tasting that nectar with everything from pancakes and waffles to candy and creemees and that curious tradition known as sugar on snow. Events to celebrate the occasion of maple season get started this month and stretch into April. Here are a few options to choose from, free unless otherwise indicated: Saturday, March 22-Sunday, March 23, the two-day Spring Maple Open House Weekend sees maple producers statewide throwing open the doors to their sugarhouses and welcoming visitors to the sights, smells and tastes inside. Maple syrup is not just some fun, feel-good symbol of Vermont; according to the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers' Association, the state still leads the nation as the top maple-producing state, with more than 3 million gallons processed in 2024 – more than half of the nation's entire production. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, March 22, activities on Spring Maple Open House Weekend include 'Maple Madness,' an event on the Church Street Marketplace in Burlington featuring live music, butter sculpture, maple samples and other giveaways and treats. 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, April 19, the Kingdom Maple Festival in St. Johnsbury begins from 8-10:30 a.m. with a pancake breakfast, followed from 8:30 a.m.-2 p.m. by a yard sale and bake sale featuring maple products; 10 a.m.-3 p.m., a Sweet Street Fair including local music on Railroad Street; 10 a.m.-3 p.m., guided tours of St. Johnsbury Distillery ($5-$10); 10 a.m.-1 p.m., the St. Johnsbury Farmers Market; and from 1-5 p.m., a maple history bus tour of St. Johnsbury and North Danville led by maple-industry historian and author Matthew Thomas ($100). Friday, April 25-Sunday, April 27, the Vermont Maple Festival sprawls over three days in St. Albans with highlights including, at 7 p.m. Friday, April 25, a concert by Americana musician Chris Staples at the St. Albans Museum, which from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, April 26 is hosting a special maple exhibit ($20 for concert, free admission to museum); from 7 a.m.-noon Saturday, April 26-Sunday, April 27, a pancake breakfast at St. Albans City School presented by the Swanton-Missisquoi Valley Lions Club ($6-$11; free for ages 4 and under); from 3-5 p.m. Saturday, April 26, a maple beverage tasting at 14th Star Brewing; and at noon Sunday, April 27, the Vermont Maple Festival parade. Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@ This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Maple syrup in Vermont: Events to celebrate sugaring season statewide
Yahoo
12-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Maple syrup season: OSU-Mansfield's sugarbush teaches sustainability through sugaring
Maple syrup season has returned to North Central Ohio. Sap should soon be flowing in most Ohio trees this week, said Gabe Karns, an assistant professor with the School of Environment and Natural Resources at Ohio State University. Prime syrup-making season runs from mid-February until early April when the trees start budding. "In your ideal world, you would get down into the low-to-mid 20s at night," Karns said. "During the daytime, you want it to get up around 40-45 degrees, plus sunshine." Faculty, students and volunteers have been busy this month preparing the sugarbush at OSU-Mansfield for this year's syrup production. Their efforts will be on display 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. March 8 during "Maple Madness," a free public event that will feature syrup-making demonstrations, tours of the woods and a meal of pancakes with fresh maple syrup. Several species of maple trees are native throughout the Buckeye State. The woods at the OSU-Mansfield campus contain a luscious 19-acre patch of maples known as the sugarbush, according to Kathy Smith, director of forestry for the School of Environment and Natural Resources at OSU. This is the seventh season that sap is collected from the 1,200 maples in the sugarbush and made into maple syrup. The location was developed for sap collection and maple syrup production thanks to state funding. The sap drains through several miles of tubing in the sugarbush that gets pumped into a massive storage tank. The site also contains a smaller wood-fired evaporator that's good for cooking a few hundred gallons of sap each day. The evaporator at OSU-Mansfield is designed strictly for educational purposes. Most of the sap collected from the university's sugarbush is taken by a maple syrup producer from Ashland County who remotely monitors the sap tank's level. "He's got a thousand-gallon tank on a trailer," Smith said. "He comes and takes it 1,000 gallons at a time." During the height of the sap flow, the tank has to be emptied two or three times daily. Sap from the Mansfield sugarbush processed in Ashland is returned to campus and available for purchase. The project was created to teach Ohioans about maple syrup production, from landowners to students and even consumers. A shocking discovery for educators was how many people had become disconnected from what true syrup really is. "Most syrup today, if you look at those on the shelf, they don't have any maple in them," Smith said. Some visitors learn that maple syrup is created from condensed tree sap. A few realize that sap from trees other than maples — like birch, hickory and sycamore — can also be made into sweet syrup. Everyone is taught that some trees can provide up to three gallons of sap each day and it takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. The system at the OSU-Mansfield sugarbush is used year-round to demonstrate to landowners and professionals the intricacies of successful sap collection. Several seminars are available for those who want to create their own sap-to-syrup operation. The university also plans to build classes for students who would like to study Ohio's maple syrup industry. "It will be taught through the lens of sustainability," Karns said. "Local food is actually better than faraway food for a number of reasons." He said the goal is to teach people that sustainability and making syrup from native Ohio trees go hand-in-hand. "Weaving sustainability through the practice of sugaring is the furthest thing from a new thing that you can possibly imagine," Karns said. "But in some ways, with some segments of society, it is sort of like an epiphany." ztuggle@ 419-564-3508 This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Maple syrup season has reached the sugarbush at OSU-Mansfield
