Visitors to the Maple Festival may watch how pure maple syrup is made this March.
Demonstrations are hosted from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 11, 12, 18 and 19 in the Maple Row Sugarhouse at the festival in Jones.
Participants may experience the taste of pure maple syrup, maple candies and other maple food at this year’s festival.
Every year, when the weather is just right, folks from Maple Row Sugarhouse hike into the woods and collect sap from the maple trees of the festival’s three sugar bushes. The syrup is then brought back to the sugarhouse and boiled down into maple syrup — it takes roughly 40 gallons of sap to make a single gallon of syrup. The festival is a time when visitors are brought in to see how pure maple syrup is made, from tap to table.
The Maple Festival is free to all who come. There will be a pancake and sausage breakfast each day.
All proceeds from the breakfast on March 11 will go to a local nonprofit organization Bair Lake Bible Camp. Other nonprofit organizations will be announced, when affirmed, for the other three days.
Meal tickets are available for purchase on the festival website, maplerowsugarhouse.com. The cost of tickets are $7 for adults, $4 for children 5 to 12 and free for children 4 and younger.
A homemade maple lunch will be served starting at noon, which includes maple brats, maple ice cream and maple baked beans.
Maple Row Sugarhouse was started by the Olson family in 2011 with the determination to make their own pure maple syrup from four maple trees in their front yard. Since then the business has grown to collecting maple sap from more than 100 acres of maple trees.
They were presented with the Ag-Tourism Award for 2015-2016. To learn more about Maple Row Sugarhouse, pure maple syrup and the Olson family visit MapleRowSugarhouse.com, or call (269) 816-4838.