The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
SAPPY TIMES
Choices abound for celebrating the maple syrup season
Maple season, in full swing this month, is best celebrated with a pancake breakfast and a visit to a sugarbush in Geauga County. A sugarbush is the operation of tapping maple trees, gathering the sap and taking it to a sugar house, where it is boiled down into maple syrup and maple sugar.
Some maple producers do it the old-fashioned way, using a horse-drawn dray to gather buckets of sap to take to the sugarhouse, while others have adopted a system of plastic hosing and get help from gravity. No matter how it’s done, it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup.
Despite a price of about $35 per gallon, no one around here makes a living as a maple producer.
Plan your weekend foray carefully and you can enjoy a hot dog boiled in maple sap at Richards Maple Products at the edge of Chardon or tantalize your taste buds at Warren’s Spirited Kitchen in Burton, where maple is an ingredient in many fine dishes.
The woods between Parkman and Welshfield in Troy Township is where you can join Ma and Pa — of Ma & Pa’s Gift Shack, 15161 Main Market Road — as they gather sap with their horses at noon and 2 p.m. Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays. They also offer sleigh rides, by reservation only. (Call the business a 440-548-5521 or visit maandpas.com.)
A good first stop is at Swine Creek Reservation, on Hayes Road in Middlefield, where you can also join a horse-drawn sap sled for a sugar-gathering trips into the woods from 1 to 4 p.m. March 10 and 11. There, you can meet costumed interpreters and learn the history of maple sugaring. Live music will be on tap indoors. This place is a stop on two separate maple tours, including a statewide one (info at ohiomaple.org).
You’ll be able to sample syrup wherever you go, and if you have a good palate, you will be able to taste how production from one sugarhouse varies from another. Most of the producers are in Geauga County, but there are a few in Lake and Ashtabula, as well. Amish farms are open on Saturday only. Head to Burton for a variety of Sunday pancake breakfasts, starting at 8 a.m. at Berkshire High School for one hosted by the Burton Middlefield Rotary. They’re also served beginning at 9 a.m. at the Century Village Museum, at Burton Fire Station and at American Legion Post No. 4589.