Melting snow … mounting daylight hours … and another certain sign of spring – the sight of sugar maple trees, sap buckets suspended from their sides, harvesting the sap that will later become the golden syrup and the maple sugar once so precious to early settlers.
Genesee Country Village & Museum celebrates this centuries-old tradition with a Maple Sugar Festival from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, March 18, 19, 25 and 26.
The program is part of the NYS Maple Weekend. Adult admission costs $10. Youth 18 and under are admitted free.
An all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast with sausage and real New York State maple syrup ($9 adults; $7 youth; free to ages one and under) is available each day from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Families can walk the maple sugar history trail, following the modernizing of sugar-making from the age of wood, through the age of metal with the metal evaporator to the modern age with its plastic tubing and 21st-century tree taps.
They can visit the Sugar Camp with its log sugar shack where the collected sap begins in its wood-fired journey from sap to syrup and sugar, explore the tapping process, taste the fresh syrup, experience the historic maple treat of “sugar on snow” or, for a fee, try maple cotton candy and maple popcorn or purchase real New York State maple syrup.
Each day the village is alive with daily tree tapping, candle making, hands-on tinsmithing activities, demonstrations by the cooper and tinsmith in making sugaring essentials and open-hearth maple cooking with tastings for visitors.
The public is also invited to enter the Cooking with Maple Contest. Prizes include a one-of-a-kind handcrafted piece by the museum’s master potter and gift certificates to the museum’s Flint Hill Gift Shop. All entry forms must be submitted to the museum between 10 and 11 a.m. March 18.
For more information, visit www.gcv.org.
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