MAPLE SUGAR FESTIVAL CELEBRATING NATURE’S SWEET TREAT

By Dave Person david.r.person@gmail.com

This year’s Maple Sugar Festival at the Kalamazoo Nature Center will feature the activities of previous celebrations, plus some additions, all packed into one day, Saturday, March 11.

The festival — this year is the 58th annual — previously was spread over two days, with some activities and locations only available to visitors for half a day each day.

“We decided to pull all of the fun into one day so people can do all the activities,” says Lisa Panich, director of marketing and communications for the Nature Center.

This year, for example, the pancake breakfast, previously offered only in the mornings, will run the entire day of the festival, from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m.

Of course, the star of the show will be the maple sugaring demonstrations, both at the sugar shack on the main campus, which uses modern-day syrup-making techniques, and at the log cabin on the DeLano Homestead property.

“At the DeLano site we’re going to be offering the historic sugaring practices as usual but we’re also going to be offering the indigenous collection methods,” Panich says. Sap from maple trees “was a valued resource for people back then.”

It takes 40 gallons of maple sap to make one gallon of syrup, according to statistics from the Michigan Ag Council, and Michigan, on average, produces around 90,000 gallons of syrup per year.

“It’s one of our lovely natural resources,” Panich says.

Don’t expect to bring any Nature Centerproduced maple syrup home with you, however. With a limited number of sapproducing trees on the property, it is only used for demonstration purposes, she says. The festival also will be an opportunity for the Nature Center to show off recent upgrades to the Visitor Center exhibit area, including its new “Up in the Air” exhibit, “that showcases the avian research that we’ve done here for decades at the Nature Center,” Panich adds.

Here’s what else visitors can expect: At the main campus, 7000 N. Westnedge Avenue:

• Maple sugar tours

• Bird of prey presentation and training demonstration

• “Up in the Air: Birds Navigating the Anthropocene” and “Art Drawn from Nature II” exhibits and artist talks

• Art-making and other activities for children

• “Creature Features” with KNC’s ambassador animals

• Story Trail: “Mushroom Rain,” by Laura K. Zimmerman

• Live music from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. with The Goat’s Beards

At the Delano Homestead and Farms, 555 West E Avenue:

• Horse-drawn wagon rides

• Candle-dipping and traditional children’s games

• “Chicken Encounters” with a representative of the farm’s flock

• Soil blocking

• “Earth Loom”: Community coming together to create a work of art

• Fiber arts demonstrations by the Weavers Guild of Kalamazoo.

There will be two levels of admission: A general admission, which includes access to the grounds and the maple sugar tour, and an all-inclusive pass, which is good for food and activities.

Pre-registration is required for the maple sugar tours and can be done online at NatureCenter.org.

An admission-only daily pass is free to KNC members, $12 for nonmembers; and $10 for nonmembers ages 4-17 and 55-plus.

The all-inclusive daily pass is $8 for members; $19 for nonmembers; and $17 for nonmembers ages 4-17 and 55-plus.

The Maple Sugar Festival is the Nature Center’s largest fundraiser of the year. Proceeds support programming that is offered throughout the year.

Panich says this year’s festival will be a return to both outdoor and indoor activities. The festival was canceled in 2021 because of Covid and last year it was held exclusively outdoors.

In 2020, right before the Covid outbreak, the Nature Center welcomed 5,000 to 6,000 visitors to the festival under pleasant weather conditions, but most years it hosts 2,000 to 3,000 people, Panich says.

“Generations of families have been coming to this and still do,” she says. “We see the whole range from kids to grandparents coming together to enjoy it.”

Some people come from great distances to attend. “This is probably our biggestdraw event, so people will travel for it,” she says.

“By the turnout, I think it’s very important (to the community); it gives people that first taste of spring for the year.”