You might not be aware, but the weather in central Iowa through much of February and the early part of March has been ideal for producing maple syrup. To that point, Dallas County Conservation will be hosting their annual maple syrup boil-down event tomorrow.

The pop-up program will be held at Sportsman Park near Dawson from 8:30 a.m. – noon. Attendees will learn about the process of tapping and draining sap, and will help boil the sap to create syrup. Conservation Outreach Coordinator Ken Keffer explains the process and why it was hard for them to nail down a precise date for the program. “It takes about 40 gallons of sap to boil down to one gallon of maple syrup, which explains partly why it’s so expensive to get authentic, real maple syrup in the stores. But we’re probably going to have 50 gallons of sap that we’ve collected from our maple trees over the course of this freeze-thaw cycle. So as the days sort of get warmer and then back to cool, that’s the trick for the maple sugaring and that’s why it happened quick on us!”

There is no cost to attend tomorrow’s program, and registration is not required. Attendees may also get a little syrup to take home with them if the harvest is as good as Keffer expects.