LUCAS — The 48th annual Maple Syrup Festival at Malabar Farm offered syrup samples, historical demonstrations and horse-drawn wagon rides on a chilly Saturday.
Attendees learned different ways of making maple syrup via live demonstrations of Native American harvesting, as well as tapping trees with wooden spikes and later metal and plastic spiles.
Tours in the Sugar Shack showed the evaporating pan in action, patented by D.M. Cook of Mansfield in 1858.
The Maple Syrup Festival started in 1976, the same year Malabar Farm became a state park.
Visitors also had the opportunity to take self-guided tours of the “Big House,” once home to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Louis Bromfield.
The annual festival takes place across two weekends each March, this year beginning March 1. The festival continues Sunday, March 9 from noon to 4 p.m.
