Maple Harvest Festival at Shaver’s Creek shows tree-to-table sugaring process

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The maple sugaring process from tree to table will be on display this weekend at the annual Maple Harvest Festival and Pancake Breakfast at Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center. The festival will be held from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, March 25 and 26, at Shaver’s Creek. Tickets for both days of the festival are sold out.

Festival-goers can see maple trees being tapped for sap, sugar water being collected and boiled down into maple syrup and enjoy an all-you-can-eat homemade pancake breakfast.  

Costumed interpreters will demonstrate sugaring techniques used by Native Americans, pioneers and modern-day farmers. Visitors can learn how to identify and tap sugar maple trees and see sap transformed into syrup at the center’s own Sugar Shack. 

“It’s really a joyful process to see where your food comes from,” said Laurie McLaughlin, who oversees the festival. “Making syrup is really a mixture of science and art.” 

A gallon of sap is 98% water and only about 2% sugar, so it takes about 40 gallons of sap to boil down to one gallon of maple syrup, McLaughlin said. It takes about eight hours to boil down the sap in the Sugar Shack, followed by another eight hours finishing it off on the stove.  

“It’s a very long process,” she said. “It takes a lot of time and effort.” 

On average, the sugar maple trees tapped at Shaver's Creek produce about 80 to 100 gallons of sap, which boils down to just two to three gallons of syrup. The more than 25 gallons of syrup on tap at the festival comes from Brydonson's Farm in Coudersport. 

The festival features local musicians and opportunities to meet the resident ambassador wildlife of Shaver’s Creek. A local farm, Plowshare Produce, will demonstrate how it grinds the cornmeal used in the pancakes. A full schedule of events is available. 

More than 100 volunteers are involved in putting on the festival each day, McLaughlin said, and many people come back year after year to help out. 

“It really is a people connector,” she said. 

In preparation for the festival, McLaughlin teaches a class to Penn State students on interpreting maple sugaring and works with six environmental education interns without whose efforts she said the festival wouldn’t be possible.  

“There’s joy in seeing their hard work come to fruition,” she said. “I love seeing them shine.”

Visit the Shaver's Creek website to see a schedule of upcoming events.