34th Maple Syrup Festival begins at Boardman Park
BOARDMAN
The welcome spring temperatures of the last few weeks have brought another annual event — the rising of sap in the trees.
Although the trees look the same, the warm daytime temperatures have signaled the life-sustaining sap that was frozen in the roots all winter to begin rising to the tops of the trees. And that means it’s time for the 34th annual Maple Syrup Festival at Boardman Township Park. The free event began Saturday and continues from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. today, Saturday and next Sunday.
The event draws a hearty band of volunteers who mark the event with demonstrations of rustic arts and crafts from a time when you couldn’t have syrup on your pancakes unless you tapped the sap from trees and boiled it for hours.
The big draw at the festival is a pancake breakfast sponsored by the Boardman Rotary Club in the Lariccia Family Community Center. An army of aproned Rotary members expect to serve about 3,000 pancake dinners by the time the festival is over, according to Shelly LaBerto, Rotary president. She said that 20 Rotarians and their high-school associates from the Interact Club will serve the breakfasts in each of three shifts daily during the four days of the festival. LaBerto said the event is the club’s second-largest fundraiser, and they’ve done it for 25 years. The breakfast is $6 for adults and free for children age 6 or younger.
In the same building, Boardman Historical Society has a display of women’s hats, which member Barbara Huberly explained are being exhibited for the first time, having previously been kept at Detchon House on U.S. Route 224.
The Mahoning Valley Watercolor Society also is there, with an array of breathtaking florals and outdoor scenes available for sale. Artists Sis Soller, president of the group, and Lynne Rosati, a member and art teacher at East High School, are there to talk about their work and to give information about the club to prospective members. The club meets from 7 to 9 p.m. the second and fourth Monday of the month, September through May, in the Boardman High School art room and invites new members to attend.
Nearby, several members of the Western Reserve Woodcarvers work on their craft and talk to the public about woodcarving. Walter Finger is working on an intricate flower and has several relief carvings on display. John Lorenzi has a collection of intricately carved heads, and Jim Shevchenko also whittles while his wife, Rebecca, makes designs on “pysanky” Easter eggs. The group welcomes anyone who would like to try their hand at carving and meets from 6 to 8 p.m. the first and third Tuesday of the month at the Boardman YMCA.
Outside, members of Boy Scout Troop 60 of Boardman practice their skills, including working with axes and hatches, making a fire in a “leave no trace” pit, practicing “lashings,” or tying ropes and knots to attach wood, as the pioneers did, and preparing a meal. Assistant Scoutmaster Mike Marconi said the event is an opportunity to teach the skills to boys who recently crossed over to Boy Scouts from Cub Scouts. Inside the Lariccia building, troop parents are conducting a silent-auction fundraiser. And attracting a group of interested scouts, a blacksmith, Zachary Howley of Struthers, demonstrates nail-making.
In a log cabin next to them, Pete Cordon, a park employee, watches a vat of boiling sap that will, after about eight hours, he says, become maple syrup. Jugs of syrup made by a local farmer also are for sale. The trees at the park are tapped for sap during the short period when the night temperatures are below freezing and the days are above. Cordon said the warm spell last week ended the sap- collecting period for the year.
Punctuating all this activity is the sound of gunfire from Civil War re-enactors outside. The group, which consists of Union and Confederate re-enactors, will demonstrate skirmishes at 1 p.m. each of the festival. Groups represented are the 7th Tennessee Dismount Cavalry and the 61st Ohio Volunteer Infantry. The re-enactors are from Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties and also include female re-enactors in period clothing.