The Annual Maple Syrup Festival at Malabar Farm State Park, a staple of the local tourism season since the 1970s, continues this weekend on both March 10 and 11.
Imagine the smell of Saturday morning breakfast, pancakes sizzling on the stove. What would that short stack be without a little maple syrup? Find out how that syrup gets to your table by attending one of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) Maple Syrup festivals. Guests are taught how the sweet treat is made and can even buy their own Ohio-made syrup.
“Shake off the winter blues and connect with a traditional Ohio pastime at one of our maple syrup festivals,” ODNR Division of Parks and Watercraft’s Chief Glen Cobb said. “Guided hikes, maple syrup demonstrations, and sweet samples are just some of the fun planned for this year’s crowds.”
Admission to the festival is free for everyone, and there is special event parking available with signage to guide visitors to the festival location. For more information, contact the park office at (419) 892-2784.
Author Louis Bromfield, the proprietor of Malabar Farm, regularly tapped the farm’s trees for maple sugar and syrup production. The sugar shack was a fixture at Malabar. In his book Pleasant Valley, Bromfield wrote,
“There is a kind of excitement which tinges the whole ceremony of sugar making,” Bromfield wrote. “Even the dogs and horses feel it. The mares stomp the earth and toss their heads and their breath steams as they snort in the frosty air of early morning or evening. And the dogs go mad running in circles round and round the sled chasing rabbits and squirrels that never were save in their imaginations.”
