Satisfy your sweet tooth and spend a delightful afternoon outdoors with your family at Maple Syrup Fest. Visitors can participate in hands-on activities and see demonstrations of various methods by which Native Americans, pioneers and people today tap trees for the production of maple syrup and sugar.
Activity stations throughout ALNC grounds will lead visitors, at their own pace, through the history of maple syruping. Naturalists will tap the maple trees on ALNC’s grounds, collect sap in buckets and boil the sap over a roaring fire as it concentrates into “liquid gold.” “When the sap is boiled, the sap’s naturally occurring water evaporates as steam, leaving the sap and its sweetness to concentrate into maple syrup,” explains Kathe Crowley Conn, ALNC’s president and executive director. Enjoy the taste of ice cream topped with fresh maple syrup! 
Visitors can tap and taste real maple tree sap, learn how to identify different types of maple trees, tour the Children’s Shack and take part in cooking demonstrations with an early pioneer settler woman and frontiersman.
The event runs from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m.
Fee: ALNC members: $6/person or $20/family; Non-members: $7/person or $25/family
Information: Call 608-216-9371 or go to www.naturenet.com/alnc.
The Aldo Leopold Nature Center (ALNC) is a private, not-for-profit educational organization dedicated to promoting the conservation ethic of Aldo Leopold through environmental education and awareness. Founded in 1994, with sites in Monona and Black Earth, ALNC provides hands-on environmental programming for school children and their families, reaching more than 30,000 students annually. In addition, ALNC sponsors Nature Net: the Environmental Learning Network, which promotes environmental education for children by organizing collaborative networks of nature centers throughout Wisconsin(www.naturenet.com).
