Working from long-range calendar planning to close-range events, we are excited about the upcoming slew of maple events. There is literally something for everybody!
Join us for the 2023 Ohio Maple Days in Ashland, Ohio, December 8th and 9th for 2 days of instructional workshops, food and fellowship, and a Saturday full of technical talks for both advanced sugarmakers and beginners. We kick things off at 1 PM on Friday with a value-added workshop that will teach participants how to make maple sugar, maple cream, maple candy, maple cotton candy, and even some maple-infused breakfast sausage links. The Ohio Maple Producers Association is hosting a maple contest with banquet blowout Friday night with the full conference agenda on Saturday. During Saturday afternoon, we are excited to offer a beginner’s track to explore the basics of maple and an advanced track that will focus on sugarhouse design, marking your woods for a crop tree release timber harvest, and more. And by popular demand, we are bringing back hydrometer testing – so please mark your calendars for December 8th and 9th. We will post the registration details as soon as they go live.
Lake Erie Maple Expo is slated for November 10-11 in Albion, PA. This popular event has an excellent list of sessions and speakers on tap for participants. I for one have never been in attendance but will be changing that this year. I hope to see a few familiar faces there!
The week prior to LEME on November 3rd and 4th, the Ohio Maple Producers will be hosting their annual meeting – stay tuned or check their website for details!
Sturbridge, Massachusetts, will be the hosting location for this year’s North American Maple Conference from October 25-28. This is the BIG show with an absolutely packed slate of tours, meetings, technical workshops, and great meals. You can find registration details here. If that’s not enough for you, the International Maple Grading School will be offered October 29th and 30th just down the road in Grafton, MA.
A bit more local, we are excited to be offering a tandem webinar/workshop in collaboration with the University of Kentucky. The webinar – evening of September 11th – will be a basic introduction to all things maple in order to whet new producers’ appetites and lure them out to the in-person event in Boone County, KY, on Monday, October 16th.
Sandwiched in between those 2 events, please consider joining us down in southwestern Ohio Saturday, September 16th for a workshop in partnership with the Cincinnati Zoo. Registration details are live on the Ohio Woodland Stewards Program website. In conjunction with the workshop, participants will have a chance to shop and browse at the Zoo’s Native Plant Nursery there on site at Bowyer Farm.
And last but not least, Pennsylvania is hosting Maple Boot Camp on September 6th-8 prefaced by a Maple Grading Workshop the morning of that Wednesday. Boot Camp is the brain child of the 3-state OH/PA/WV, and it is the Keystone State’s turn to host. We are excited about this in-depth, deep dive into maple sugaring and hope to repeat the success of last year’s Boot Camp in Ohio.
I’ll be sprinkling reminders here and there as different registration deadlines loom, but I hope to cross paths with you at least once, if not multiple times, throughout the fall maple programming season. Lots of options to choose from!!