Sugar Camp Days festival celebrates 50th year this weekend

NEW CARLISLE, Ind. (WNDU) - It’s the 50th year of Sugar Camp Days at Bendix Woods County Park, a winter festival dedicated to maple syrup and teaching you all about it.

Did you know it takes 40 gallons of maple tree sap to make one gallon of maple syrup?

The process to make it seems easy, but one of the many things being taught at Sugar Camp Days is just how much goes into it all, and the history of its discovery.

As well as seeing how the syrup is made from tree to bottle, there are a ton of other education experiences, including blacksmithing demonstrations, ice sculpture carving, and cooking demonstrations that teach you how to incorporate the maple syrup into tasty snacks and foods.

There is an all you can eat pancake and sausage breakfast, and much more.

“It’s such a special operation because it’s not something that you can see every day, and you can only see it this time of year as well, when the temperatures are below freezing at night and above freezing during the day, that’s when the sap is running, and that’s when we can make maple syrup. And a lot of times, there are people who have been coming their whole lives, and so we really get to see this be part of the community,” says Hannah Branchick, the Sugaring Operations Manager at the park.

For more information and a list of Sugar Camp Day’s events, click here.

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