Sugar Camp Days

Sugar Camp Days are set for March 21 and 22, 2015, in Bendix Woods County Park, Timothy Road, New Carlisle, Indiana.

Visitors can watch sap boil down into syrup and tour the sugar bush. A bonus: The New Carlisle Lion’s Club will be serving up a pancake and sausage breakfast (an annual fundraiser), and there’ll be homemade baked goods made with maple syrup for sale.

Hours are 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., and admission is $7 per vehicle.

(Photo by Joe Zlomek)

Maple Syrup Festival

This is the 46th year for the Maple Syrup Festival, 403 South Wabash, Wakarusa, Indiana.

April 24, 25 and 26, 2015, Road Trips Foodies can visit with history re-enactors at the Wakarusa Historical Museum and take a sugar camp tour to see how the sweet stuff is made.

It’s sponsored by the Wakarusa Chamber of Commerce.

(Photo courtesy of Wakarusa Maple Syrup Festival)

Tapped the Trees Today in Central Indiana

National Maple Syrup Festival

Set your sights for Indiana's Brown County the first weekend in March. That's the new location for the National Maple Syrup Festival.

From March 5 through 8, 2015, there'll be tree tapping, sap boiling and lots of foods and drinks using maple syrup as an ingredient in and around Brown County State Park.

The Dutch Oven Diva will cook, bake and have samples of her sweet and savory foods around a huge stone fireplace in Brown County State Park. The rangers there will lead interpretive hikes, teaching how to identify maple trees in winter and spring. Descendents of the Delaware and Shawnee native tribes will reenact how their ancestors made maple syrup on this land centuries ago, and, nearby, French Colonial reenactors will demonstrate how early white settlers made it differently.

The Story Inn will be home to the Sweet Victory Challenge, a culmination of national recipe contests for youth and adults, involving chefs, food writers and bloggers.

Downtown Nashville’s Pioneer Village will come alive with demonstrations of early pioneer sugaring methods. Nashville restaurants and retailers will focus on maple-related foods and wares, food and art artisans with candies, breads, chocolates and other foods and art from maple sap and maple trees will line the streets.

Authors who have written on the maple syrup craft will be featured guests at dinners with foods and beers from maple syrup.

Ever had a pancake flipped onto your plate from 20 yards? Chris Cakes travels the country making pancakes coupled with a show like none other, and the Brown County High School is hosting that show on the mornings of March 7 and 8.

Why Maple Syrup is So Expensive

Those of us who make maple syrup know this stuff, but for those of you who wonder what/when/why, check out this article in the Huffington Post.

Why Maple Syrup Is So Damn Expensive

The Bloom Is on for Maple Syrup

"Pancake lovers, take heart," writes Joshua A. Krisch in The New York Times. "In the coming weeks, maple farmers throughout Quebec, Vermont and elsewhere in the syrup belt will dust off their metal spiles for another harvest season, and some scientists are predicting that the sugary sap will flow even more freely than usual.

"That’s because this year, the region is likely to have what is known in botany as a mast year — a time every few years when perennial trees like sugar maples synchronize their seed cycles, and flower as one. Low-seed years usually lead to mass blooms, and may bode particularly well for the maple syrup industry."

Read the rest here.

A Corpse in Maple Syrup?

Kathy Reichs, known for her mystery series featuring a forensic anthropologist named Temperance Brennan, turns out to be knowledgeable about maple syrup production as well.

In her latest, "Bones Never Lie" (New York: Bantam Books, 2014), one of Dr. Brennan's cases involves a corpse preserved in a vat of maple syrup.

A discussion of the sugaring process (in this novel, it's in Vermont) includes both collection of sap and syrup production.