One of the very best outdoors events that our family enjoys, is the annual Maple Weekend that the Tioga & Potter counties Maple Producers Associations holds. This year is the 11th annual event. For more detailed information than we can fit into this short column, you can go to their website www.pamaple.com The event runs Saturday & Sunday, March 21st & 22nd from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. both days.
In addition to the 15 sites, there is another annual event going on at Hills Creek State Park near Wellsboro entitled Maple Weekend Open House. The event is also both days and times as the Maple Producers Association event. This is the place for you to actually learn with Department of Conservation and Natural Resources Specialist Tim Morey. We go almost every year and try to take a youngster along. The tours last about 45 minutes and you will learn to identify a sugar maple tree, help tap it and hang a bucket, learn how the Native American Indians did it and how they used the maple sap. Lastly, you will get to visit the sap house and get some maple treats. Our granddaughter Lindsay really enjoyed her visit and all the demonstrations. We were really proud of her when Tim Morey asked her “how does one identify a sugar maple tree?” Her answer was, “it is the one with the sap bucket attached.” Pretty cool answer for a kid or an adult for that matter.
Tim will have some other personnel and volunteers. You will enjoy seeing the old and modern gear used for tapping sugar maple trees as well as how they used to boil down sap and how it is done today. Be sure to take a camera and binoculars as you will see birds at the lake, ice or not.
At most if not all of the 15 private maple operations, you will be also able to see a sap houses, get some free food and buy maple products. Since we have not been able to visit all 15 sites, (3 in one day is just about the limit), we will share some of the ones we have been to.
After we get done visiting the demonstration at Hills Creek State Park, it is just a quick trip over to Miller’s Purely Maple. That is the first place where we were offered hot dogs boiled in water and some maple syrup. Wow, we have never cooked hot dogs any other way since. Dale & Melanie Miller have a nice selection of maple products to sell and you can visit Dale at the sap house as he explains the operation.
Butler Family Maple is right off route 287. If one enjoys homemade soup, they usually have about 3 selections along with other free food and maple items for sale also. This is another place we try to visit each year.
Jim Collins is an outdoor writer for this newspaper. To contact him, email jimcollinsinsurance@frontiernet.net; or write to him at Outdoors With Jim Collins, 87 Windfall Road, Alba, PA 16910.