ESCANABA, Mich. (WZMQ) – If you’re in the mood for something sweet, the Michigan State University (MSU) Forestry Innovation Center has just the event for you.
Saturday, March 28, and Sunday, March 29, the MSU Forestry Innovation Center invites the public to celebrate Maple Weekend.
“From 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., we’re open to the public,” said Center Director Jesse Randall. “It’s really the art and science of how we make maple syrup here in the Upper Peninsula. If we can get to the woods, we’ll show them how sap is collected in the woods. Then in the sugar house, we’ll walk them through how we turn a drop of maple sap into maple syrup.”
Attendees will also learn how that syrup is incorporated into a variety of treats.
“People will be able to smell, to taste maple syrup, maple candy,” Randall said. “They will be able to try maple cream and all of those other confections that we have.”
Maple Weekend is a community-wide partnership, from the BellaNasi food truck that will be on site to special offerings at local businesses.
“We have L&M, and they’re going to be here with maple supplies for sale,” said Randall. “We’ve partnered with Joe to Go, and they have a coffee sprinkle that is maple. It is exceptional. We’ve partnered with Fresh Water Tavern. They’re making cocktails out of it in March. The Swedish Pantry has our syrup for sale, but they also offer breakfast. The Elks are having a dinner and a breakfast all weekend long. It starts on Friday with pork chops that have our seasoning on it. The Highland Golf Course is going to be doing meals. Saunders Point brewery has made a special maple beer that they’re going to open Friday night. We will have samples of that beer here. We also have Leigh’s Garden Winery. They’ve made up a couple of corktails, again, with our maple syrup.”
That amounts to a lot of maple syrup. Randall says it takes a lot of work to get it from the tree to the table.
“It really is that age-old tradition of putting a hole in a maple tree, gathering that sap,” he explained. “You need cold nights and warm days, so the U.P. is perfect in the spring. It takes about 43 gallons of raw sap to make one gallon of finished maple syrup. We are going to show ways that you can reduce the amount of time, reduce the amount of labor, and make a high-quality, high-value product.”
Randall says the maple syrup industry is a growing one. With more diners opting for it as an all-natural sweetener and more producers trying their hands at tapping trees, Maple Weekend is sure to be a hit.
“A lot of folks have camps; they have maple trees,” he said. “It’s a way that you can get outside after a long winter. It’s the first agricultural crop that we have in Michigan. The more outreach we do, the more producers we’re finding. Whether they tap ten trees or ten thousand trees, there’s a lot of maple syrup made in the U.P. It is already a tradition that’s ingrained in the Upper Peninsula. We want to help promote that industry.”
The MSU Forestry Innovation Center is located at 6005 J Road. For more information about this weekend’s activities, click here.
