Live march 8 this Lesley Stewart from CHCH

http://www.chch.com/index.php/morning-live-blog/item/7242-maple-syrup-time-at-bronte-creek-provincial-park

 

 

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March is Maple Syrup Month + bonus April 1, 2012!

Rachel NaudSpecial to the Star http://www.thestar.com/article/1128059--sugar-bushes-are-a-sweet-way-to-spend-the-day-with-your-family

You'd be hard pressed to find something more Canadian than maple syrup. Ever since Native Americans first taught settlers how to tap maple trees and boil down the sap, Canada has been a leading producer of the golden liquid. In fact, today, Canada produces about 85 per cent of the world’s supply. And although you can buy syrup year-round, one of the sweetest signs of spring is when the sap begins to flow. Unfortunately, it’s short-lived. The maple season typically lasts four to six weeks, and sap flow is heaviest for only 10 to 20 days, providing all the more reason to get out and enjoy the best of nature’s sweet bounty. Here are the best places to find your next sugar high:

Bronte Creek Maple Festival

Location: Bronte Creek Provincial Park (Oakville/Burlington). About 30 minutes from Toronto.

When: Each weekend in March plus March Break (March 12 through 16) from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Admission: $16 per vehicle.

Contact details: www.brontecreek.org

The Bronte Creek Maple Festival serves up the sweet stuff with a unique Victorian flair. Workers dressed in authentic Victorian costume demonstrate how to tap maple trees and make maple syrup and maple sugar using two different methods — the Pioneer Method and First Nations method. Families can also dress up and get their very own Victorian portrait done. Afterwards, stroll through the 100-year-old Spruce Lane Farmhouse and homestead and see for yourself the rich history of the area and the syrup. Family games are part of the festivities, including hay bales and carrying an old-fashioned bucket with a yoke. Don’t forget to grab some maple taffy while you’re there.

 

 

 

oops ... wrong date... should be the 3rd!

Annnual Event  - 2012

 

You’re invited to Bronte Creek’s Annual Maple Syrup Festival

 

Fresh Ontario maple syrup begins flowing at Bronte Creek Provincial Park on March 3, 2012 when the park’s annual Maple Syrup Festival gets under way.

 

“The Maple Syrup Festival is a great time to visit Bronte Creek Provincial Park.  Spruce Lane Farm is alive with activity! The Maple Syrup Festival combines natural resources and our cultural heritage seamlessly” says Festival Organizer, Andrew Cirtwill.  “As much as maple syrup is a part of our cultural heritage… attending our Maple Syrup Festival has become an annual tradition for many local families.” 

 

The maple syrup festivities are open to the public from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. every weekend in March and from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. daily through March Break (March 12-26th).  School field trips are offered during the week, where students can learn first-hand how maple syrup is made.

 

Hop on a wagon that will take you to a heated pancake house where you can enjoy fresh, hot pancakes with pure maple syrup and sausages, served up throughout the festival hours.

 

Enjoy a guided tour of the Maple Lane, where 1890s costumed interpreters demonstrate how to tap maple trees, make maple syrup and maple sugar.  View artifacts in the maple museum or tour the 100-year-old Spruce Lane Farmhouse.   Be sure to browse through the maple products and souvenirs available in the Maple Gift Shoppe and pick up a bottle of syrup to take home.

 

Daily Vehicle Permits are $16.00/ vehicle or $53.75/ bus. For more information or to book your school field trip call 905-827-6911 or visit www.BronteCreek.org.

 

 Extra charges apply for meals: Pancake meals include hot, fresh pancakes with pure maple syrup, crisp bacon or sausage, and a drink. 

 

The Maple Syrup Festival takes place in the Day-use area of Bronte Creek Provincial Park.  It’s just north of the QEW on Burloak Drive, between Oakville and Burlington (Exit 109).   

-30-

Contact:

Sheila Wiebe

Bronte Creek Provincial Park

(905) 827-6911, Ext. 228

 

 

Sheila Wiebe (HBOR, BA, BEd, CIG)

Park Natural Heritage Education Specialist

Bronte Creek Provincial Park

1219 Burloak Drive

Oakville, Ontario L6M 4J7

 

905-827-6911 ext 228

March is Maple Syrup Month

December is HOMESTEAD CHRISTMAS

 

Bronte Creek Maple Festival Time!

Annnual Event  - 2012

 

You’re invited to Bronte Creek’s Annual Maple Syrup Festival

 

Fresh Ontario maple syrup begins flowing at Bronte Creek Provincial Park on March 5, 2012 when the park’s annual Maple Syrup Festival gets under way.

 

“The Maple Syrup Festival is a great time to visit Bronte Creek Provincial Park.  Spruce Lane Farm is alive with activity! The Maple Syrup Festival combines natural resources and our cultural heritage seamlessly” says Festival Organizer, Andrew Cirtwill.  “As much as maple syrup is a part of our cultural heritage… attending our Maple Syrup Festival has become an annual tradition for many local families.” 

 

The maple syrup festivities are open to the public from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. every weekend in March and from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. daily through March Break (March 12-26th).  School field trips are offered during the week, where students can learn first-hand how maple syrup is made.

 

Hop on a wagon that will take you to a heated pancake house where you can enjoy fresh, hot pancakes with pure maple syrup and sausages, served up throughout the festival hours.

 

Enjoy a guided tour of the Maple Lane, where 1890s costumed interpreters demonstrate how to tap maple trees, make maple syrup and maple sugar.  View artifacts in the maple museum or tour the 100-year-old Spruce Lane Farmhouse.   Be sure to browse through the maple products and souvenirs available in the Maple Gift Shoppe and pick up a bottle of syrup to take home.

 

Daily Vehicle Permits are $16.00/ vehicle or $53.75/ bus. For more information or to book your school field trip call 905-827-6911 or visit www.BronteCreek.org.

 

 Extra charges apply for meals: Pancake meals include hot, fresh pancakes with pure maple syrup, crisp bacon or sausage, and a drink. 

 

The Maple Syrup Festival takes place in the Day-use area of Bronte Creek Provincial Park.  It’s just north of the QEW on Burloak Drive, between Oakville and Burlington (Exit 109).   

 

 

 

Happy Valentines Day @BronteCreek

LOVE and Courtship Gone WILD…. RE-cap.

Took place Feb 11, 2012…. The wind chill made it feel like -18!

10 people enjoyed the program --- 6 of them were members of the public.

Thanks to everyone who attended the first ever ADULT-only “Valentine’s” program at Bronte Creek Provincial Park (and quite possibly Ontario Parks too).  How does it feel to be part of something sooo fresh.... sooo raw???  Does that mean that Ontario Parks has lost its innocence? Well maybe, but I do need to keep this post PG....

Promptly at 7pm our hike started off for a short but chilly walk to Breckon Shelter.

Along the way we had a couple of stops to discuss why this program?  Why Now?  Of course we have a link to Valentine’s Day. Would you believe that we are not the only creatures who get amorous in the month of February?  Call it February blahs or just keeping warm, but we are not the only creatures using wooing to pass the time or... well giving in to nature.

Bronte Creek Provincial Park has become an island of green in an urban setting, home to many animals that might also call your backyard home.   Bronte Creek was established in the early 1970’s when the surrounding landscape didn’t really look that much different than the park land.  If you take a look at Google Earth you will notice just how vital Bronte Creek Provincial Park has become to wild animals in the area.

Bronte Creek is located on the edge of the Carolinian Forest Region and Transition Forest of the Great Lake St Lawrence lowlands.  The forest type dictates the animals that will be found in the area. In the area known as Carolinian Canada there are many rare and threatened plants, insects, birds, amphibians and mammals.  I wish I could tell you which ones specifically.... but I can’t.  It is TOP secret.  All I can tell you, is that Bronte Creek protects numerous “species X’s”.

OK, ok, enough of that.... we KNOW that Bronte Creek Provincial Park is important to the protection of our natural environment. Agreed.

What you came here to find out about is the secret lives of these more common animals... and the interesting stuff that happens sometimes at night and sometimes right in front of us!  Yes... RIGHT in front of you.

Have you ever watched 2 damselflies? Those bright blue or red dragonfly-like insects?  Yeah... when they are flying around attached together... they are not saving energy!

Have you watched as the squirrel chase one another up and down the tree truck?  Remind you of anyone?  Or watched our peacock presents his grand display of tail feathers to just about anyone who will pay attention?

Funny how wild animal and human courtship has similarities.  I found out that courtship has 5 phases.

                                    Animal world                                                          Human world

Attention:                  Dance,                                                             Dance (or other                                                                                                                       antics)

                                    Colourful feathers,                                          Flashy clothing

                                    Scent (urine)                                                    cologne

 

Recognition                Female sticks around                                      return the look, flip hair

 

Communication         Call (hoot, tweet, grunt)                                 Call, text.

                                    Hang out                                                         hangout, dinner,                                                                                                                      movie

Touch                          nuzzle, poke                                                    safe touch... graze of                                                                                                              arm

                                    rest close by                                                    progress :hold hand,                                                                                                               hug, kiss.

Whoopee                   mate                                                                ditto

 

We arrived at the semi-heated Breckon Shelter with table decorated with candles and candy dishes.  Andrew welcomed us and we settled in for the educational yet very entertaining portion of the night.

 

Who will forget the reenactment of the American Woodcock’s flight pattern?  Or the way they walk?  I particularly enjoyed watching Andrew fumble and I think he might have even blushed just a bit as he tried to say the non-PG word for mating and the body parts which go along with it.  I found it humorous (as did the audience) that sometimes those juvenile terms are easier to say than the adult terms.  Funny how “no limits” is sometime harder to work with.

 

During the presentation we learned about the birds and the bees… no really we learned about Wild Turkeys, American Woodcock’s and Honey Bees!  We also heard about the Red-sided Garter Snake and the way some males lure the other males away from the females, boy they are sneaky!

 

We will be offering this program again in the future, maybe when the weather is a touch warmer.

 

To listen for the American Woodcock mating flight head out into the woods around the end of March and April.  Honey Bee social life can bee viewed up close at the Nature Centre May-Sept. and the Garter Snakes will be emerging from there dens April or May.

 

Thanks for joining us on the hike/ program and thank you for checking back in with us to read this blog.

 

Sign up for the E-newsletter or like us on Facebook --- there will be more programs and events posted in the near future as we prepare for SUMMER!!!

 

Park Ranger.

 

 

 

 

Love and Courtship GONE WILD

OUR first ever ADULT ONLY hike is being offered tonight Feb 11, 2012 … just in time for Valentine’s Day.

 

Program will have adult content – we wouldn’t have to find the PG words for… well… You know.

 

Program starts at 7pm sharp at the park store/ rink.  Find the blue program sandwich board. 

 

We go on a short walk and then arrive at a semi-heated shelter where we will enjoy a presentation by Andrew Cirtwill the Park Natural Heritage Education Leader.  After the Presentation we will continue our walk – hopefully finding some owls, deer and other cool animals that make Bronte Creek Provincial Park .. home.

 

Dress for the weather (snow boots, hat and mitts--- warm coat).  My Mom always said better to have tooo much clothing than not enough.  Layers are key. (thanks Mom).

 

Price is just entry fee to park… not registration required.

 

NO dogs please.

 

 

See you tonight!

 

Park Ranger ^sw 

 

 

Great Places in Canada... Bronte Creek

Have you voted today???

 

Vote for Bronte Creek Provincial Park --- Under Public Spaces  --- Ontario…..

 

http://www.greatplacesincanada.com/

 

thanks…

 

Sheila Wiebe (HBOR, BA, BEd, CIG)

Park Natural Heritage Education Specialist

Bronte Creek Provincial Park

1219 Burloak Drive

Oakville, Ontario L6M 4J7

 

905-827-6911 ext 228

 

March is Maple Syrup Month

Decemeber is HOMESTEAD CHRISTMAS