Saturday is Sweet With Boyce Park Maple Sugaring Festival

It will be a sweet weekend at Boyce Park this Saturday for the Boyce Park Maple Sugaring Festival.

Tammy Watychowicz, Boyce Park naturalist and horticulturalist, has been working through the Allegheny Parks Department for more than three decades to bring the uniqueness of maple sugaring to audiences young and old. 

This year will be no exception as the Boyce Park Maple Sugaring Festival will take place this Saturday, March 12, from 11 a.m. to noon, and 1 to 2 p.m., at Boyce Park’s Nature Center in Plum.

“This is just one of the many programs that we have here at the nature center, but the Maple Sugaring Festival is a unique one that only happens once a year,” Watychowicz said. 

“This is our chance to educate people about the blessed gifts that we get from trees and nature.”

Watychowicz said that the event, which has been going on for more than 30 years, was created to close out the winter season and welcome the spring season, which is the perfect time for maple sugaring. 

Visitors to the event can expect to learn about the pioneer, Native-American, and modern methods of maple sugaring, enjoy free samples of maple sugar in a variety of forms including sugar, syrup, cream and taffy and learn the entire maple sugaring process from tapping the trees and collecting the sap to boiling the sap and making maple syrup.

There will also be information sheets and maple recipes available for visitors to take with them to learn even more.

“It’s such a fun, educational day that uses all of your senses,” Watychowicz said.

Besides learning the ins and outs of maple sugaring, visitors to the Maple Sugaring Festival will also have the opportunity to visit the Natural History Museum inside the Nature Center, learn to identify trees and different animal tracks and learn more about all that nature has to offer.

“I hope that visitors will learn to be respectful to trees and nature, and the importance of trees,” Watychowicz said. 

“We can see the beauty that they provide on a daily basis, but when we learn about these different aspects, then we see how this is something that we shouldn’t take for granted.”

The Boyce Park Maple Sugaring Festival is free and open to the public.

For those who are unable to attend the Boyce Park event, there will still be one more maple sugaring event hosted by Watychowicz on Saturday, March 19, from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Harrison Hills Park Environmental Learning Center in Harrison Twp.

For more information about either of these events, please call 724-733-4618.