UMaine Page Farm and Home Museum Offers Annual Spring Field Trip
Contact: Patty Henner, (207) 581-4100, George Manlove, (207) 581-3756
ORONO — The UMaine Page Farm and Home Museum in Orono is celebrating maple syrup season with a public field trip to a sugaring operation on Friday, March 31.
This year’s annual spring field trip will travel to Breakneck Ridge Farm near Monson to see the family-run sugaring operation and its buffalo and deer herds.
Please call (207) 581-4100 for reservations before March 29 or for further details. Participants should plan to dress warmly and wear appropriate shoes, as some walking will be required.
The motor coach from Cyr Bus Tours leaves at 8 a.m. from the museum and will return to the Orono campus by 4 p.m., says Patricia Henner, Page Farm and Home Museum director. The coach is fully equipped with comfortable seating and restroom facilities.
The cost is $35 per person and includes transportation and a light lunch in a Guilford eatery. Participants also will visit Griff’s Blacksmith Shop near Guilford for a blacksmithing demonstration.
Breakneck Ridge Farm will offer demonstrations of its maple syrup operations and a tour of the farm’s sugarbush. A sugarbush is where sugar maple trees feed sweet sap, often through plastic tubing, to the sugar house, where it is simmered into maple syrup, sugar or caramelized for candy.
Both Breakneck Ridge Farm and Griff’s will open their gift shops for visitors during the day.
Maine is one of the biggest producers of pure maple syrup in the world. “Sugaring” is one of New England’s oldest agricultural enterprises and is traditionally the first harvest of the year following winter, Henner says. Maple syrup season also is one of the first harbingers of spring.
Sugaring in Maine was first practiced by Native American Indians, and learned by colonists and settlers in New England. Settlers referred to maple syrup as Indian sugar or Indian molasses.
Information about Page Farm and Home Museum can be found on the website: http://www.umaine.edu/pagefarm/.