STORY — The National Maple Syrup Festival made its sweet return to Brown County at the Story Inn the first weekend of March. Visitors came from as far as Louisiana, Illinois and Kentucky to get a taste of southern Indiana syrup.
The weekend featured maple sugaring demonstrations by French Colonial and Native American reenactors, flying pancakes served by Chris Cakes, maple syrup taste tests, a maple evaporator demonstration, live music and a cooking contest.
The festival, owned by Tim Burton of Maplewood Farms, moved to Brown County in 2015 after it outgrew its former home of Medora in Jackson County. It took place in downtown Nashville and the state park in 2015 and 2016. Because of a lack of funding and volunteers, the county didn’t host it the past two years, but this year, Story Inn picked it up.
Jodi Jenkins, of Burton’s Maplewood Farm, had three different kinds of maple syrup available for visitors to try: A peach brandy barrel-aged maple syrup; a Kentucky bourbon barrel-aged maple syrup; and the farm’s Grade B classic maple syrup. “When you think of maple syrup, that’s what it is,” Jenkins said of the Grade B flavor.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]J.L. Walbert and Betty Simpson traveled from Glasgow, Kentucky, to attend the festival. They stopped by to taste the different maple syrups from Burton’s Maplewood Farm. The couple had caught the National Maple Syrup Festival in Brown County twice before.
New to the festival this year was beer, wine and spirit sampling, along with local artisan demonstrations.
Dani Ham was branding pieces of wood throughout the day using brands created by local metal artist Brad Cox of Cox Creek Mill.
The maple fun extended outside of Story with more than 30 restaurants serving meals featuring real maple syrup. Maple on the Menu will continue on for the rest of the month, too.
On Saturday, visitors also gathered at the Brown County Visitors Center to learn the basics of how syrup is made before walking into downtown Nashville to actually see a maple tree being tapped.
