And on the quest to learn more about the secrets of the maple sugar tree, there will be various stations to guide visitors to discover facts and lore about the process of turning sap into syrup.
"Last year, we added a Folklore Station," explained Cathy Snowberger, spokeswoman for the county Parks and Recreation Department, which is sponsoring the event with the Chester County Board of Commissioners.
At the station, visitors can listen to interpretations of how maple syrup was invented when an Indian cooked beef in the sap of a sugar maple tree and became legendary for her cooking.
At the Tree Identification and Tapping Stations, visitors can learn how to identify the sugar maple, which could be growing in their back yards, and the appropriate method for tapping the trees.
And, there will be a chance to see two types of maple syrup production.
One side of the quarter-mile Maple Lane will be lined with time-worn buckets hanging from metal spiles that will collect the dripping sap. Each day, one at a time, these buckets must be emptied into a large collecting tank, which is then emptied into a holding tank for storage.
On the opposite side, modern tubing systems link all the trees together, channeling the flowing sap by gravity into storage tanks at the bottom of the sloping pathway.
Snowberger said a Boiling Down Station at the base of Maple Lane operated all day to produce maple syrup. It takes 30 to 40 gallons of sap to produce one gallon of pure maple syrup.
"Because the festival is so popular, the syrup produced that day is used for demonstration purposes only," Snowberger said.
She added that commercially produced maple syrup can be purchased at the festival from Kinnan Century Trees of Middlebury, Pa..
"They will also have maple candy and maple cream for sale," she added.
