Whitetop Maple Festival keeping fire department running
Posted By Admin on March 27, 2011
WHITETOP, Va. –
If you go Sunday:
- Pancake meal at Mt. Rogers School: $7 for adults, $4 children; 8 am to 5 pm
- Mountain music at Mt. Rogers Fire Hall: $5; noon to 5 pm
- Sugar house tours: free; 11 am to 5 pm
- Tapping tours: free; 11 am to 4 pm
Six thousand pancakes. Thats how many Cheryl Wiles estimates she and other volunteers in the kitchen at Mt. Rogers School will have flipped by the days end, as the two-day Maple Festival wraps up today in Whitetop.
Shes been flipping flapjacks at the festival for 18 years, but said she doesnt tire of them because youre lucky to get time to eat if youre working.
The pancakes are served three on a plate with homemade sausage, applesauce and the festivals pride and joy homemade maple syrup, made by the gallon each season by volunteers and members of the Mt. Rogers Volunteer Fire Department and Rescue Squad.
Dozens of hungry locals and visitors from North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and other places filed through the Mt. Rogers School cafeteria lunch line Saturday to get a taste of the homemade hotcakes and syrup. Then they could peruse through any of the classrooms filled with handmade jewelry, wood carvings and clothing.
I used to come and work here when I was younger, when they first started, Whitetop native Sherri Perry said. I remember being here before I was 10, I used to wash silverware.
Now in her 40s, Perry ate pancakes Saturday with her 4-year-old son AJ, who said he likes the syrup.
Theres people from all over who come, she said. People you havent seen in years youll see at this festival.
Just down the road from the school, bluegrass bands played toe-tapping tunes at the fire department, where volunteers also sold baked goods and hot dogs. A line-up of nine different bands was slated to run between the two days of the festival.
Festival visitors took tours of the site where the trees are tapped, and the sugar house where the sugar water not sap is boiled down until its about 62 percent sugar, said Delbert Blevins, who has volunteered with the fire department for the past 40 years.
Its pure syrup, too, he said. There aint nothing added to it. It gets to the stage where if you heat it up two more degrees itll go into sugar.
Buddy Emerson, who led tours of the tree tapping site, said volunteers started tapping the trees in mid-February, and usually get about 200 gallons of syrup out of the 3,000 sugar maples they use.
We might get a little more [water from the trees] this week, he said. The weathers supposed to be cold. It has to be about 30 degrees nights and about 50 degrees during the day to get it to run good.
It takes about 50 to 60 gallons of sugar water from the trees to make a gallon of syrup, Blevins said.
The finished product is sold by quarts and pints at most festivals stops. Proceeds from the sales as well as from the pancake meal at the school and baked goods at the fire house benefit the fire department and rescue squad.
Members say that in light of recent cutbacks, fundraisers like the Maple Festival, one of three festivals in Whitetop annually, are important to keep the department running.
All weve got left is our festivals, Capt. Joey Roop said. They have to become a priority.
He said between $4,000 and $15,000 is typically raised during the festival, and this years crowd has been bigger than expected.
The pancakes, served from 8 am to 5 pm both days, are an integral part of that fundraising effort, and are produced en masse. The pancake meal was still held at the school, even though it was closed at the end of last year.
Were running 66 pancakes on the griddle at one time, said Olaf Richardson, who was one of the founding members of the fire department in the 1970s. He said the festival started in the 70s out of a need to raise money for the new department, which was so broke they parked the fire trucks in a borrowed shed.
One woman, Grace Haga, has mixed up the batter for those thousands of pancakes for 16 years, including buckwheat pancakes from scratch, although she said she had help from her daughters this year.
Haga has made more pancake batter than the International House of Pancakes, according to a general consensus in the kitchen Saturday.
You work all day at it but it dont take more than a few minutes to mix it, she said, shrugging off the praise. Ive got a lot invested in [this festival]. I worked here [at the school] 50-some years in the cafeteria and I worked here again for 12 years until they closed the school.
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