Maple syrup days

DANI MESSICK

THE GOSHEN NEWS

LAGRANGE — Growing in popularity, hundreds of people attended Maple Syrup Days at the Maple Wood Nature Preserve this weekend.

The event features an exhibition of the cornerstone of the property’s land — the maple trees — along with special demonstrations on tapping and evaporation through the ages.

“Everybody does it different, everybody has a different amount of sap,” volunteer Greg Kirkwood explained to a crowd during a presentation at the sugar shack.

Kirkwood explained that through the evaporation of the water, roughly 2% of it becomes maple syrup.

“We’re just making steam until that’s what’s left,” he said.

There were sugar shack tours, horse-drawn wagon rides, an entertainment tent and a maple

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Elma Chapman, Friends of the LaGrange County Parks, scoops maple syrup tea for patrons of Maple Syrup Days at Maple Wood Nature Preserve Saturday, March 21, 2026.

Dani Messick | The Goshen News

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syrup store all aimed around exploring and celebrating the production of maple syrup at the preservation. Across the 23 acre sugar bush of the property there were modern taps as well as historical taps that participants of the horsedrawn wagon rides got to view in action.

Maple syrup that is sold at the store during Maple Syrup Days comes directly from the 417 taps in the woods by way of 62 metal buckets and 355 plastic buckets.

“The parks team are the ones that maintain this,” said LaGrange County Parks Department Event Planner Jennifer Martin. “It’s all educational purposes. This is not for profit.”

This year the parks department collected about 3,600 gallons of sap. The park’s supply this year did amount to less than would traditionally be expected, though, only about 58 gallons of syrup.

“Our trees have about 1-2% sugar in them, in the sap,” she explained. “When normally it would take 40 gallons of sap to one gallon of syrup, it was taking us about 80 gallons of sap to one gallon of syrup ... It changes every year.”

Martin said the low production is in large part due to the number of trees on the property and their proximity to each other.

“This is a nature preserve so we can’t thin the trees or anything like that, so our trees have to compete with all these others,” she explained. “Our leaves don’t start until the very top, so we don’t have a whole lot of leaves, which those are the ones that produce the sugar. A maple tree in my yard has way more leaves on it than the ones here and probably has a lot more sugar in it.”

There are several types of maple trees on the preserve, but the department only taps the sugar maples because their sap is the sweetest.

Martin said the event also benefitted the parks by bringing people out to see what they have to offer and resulted in many, many people asking if they could volunteer.

“There’s other programs that happen throughout the year,” she said. “We’re trying to draw more attention to this because it’s a really near area.”

For example, Martin’s next project for the park is an enchanted fair door trail with metal fairy wings for photo opps through the sugar bush trail.

Lynn Weaver, of the South Milford Lions Club, said around noon Saturday that the Pancake Breakfast sales were also going well.

“I think we’ll be around 1,700 people that we serve today,” he said, a little before an hour from closing. “That’s a good day for us.”

In total for the weekend, Weaver anticipated about 3,000 people attending.

A fundraiser for the South Milford Lions Club, the money is then redistributed or donated to the LaGrange Parks Department and various nonprofits or to support community needs.

“We’ve been doing this for 30 years, our club, and we’re really just trying to Maple Wood park and doing this for a good cause,” Weaver said.

Weaver said most of Saturday there was a short line to get into the building.

Martin said the line at the maple syrup store also stayed active all day long, since opening at 8 a.m. and the magician, new this year, John Gilmore, maintained a packed house. The wagon rides were consistent all day, too.

“It has been steady traffic — actually, we had people here at 6:30 wanting to get pancakes,” she said. “Last year we had over 6,000 people here. With this type of weather — the weather’s beautiful, I would say we’re on good track to exceed those numbers.”

Dani Messick is the education and entertainment reporter for The Goshen News. She can be reached at dani.messick@goshennews.com or at 574538-2065.

The Pancake Breakfast by the South Milford Lions Club brought community out to Maple Wood Nature Preserve during Maple Syrup Days this weekend.

Dani Messick | The Goshen News