By Dawn De Busk

Staff Writer

BALDWIN — For some people, Christmas or Thanksgiving top the list of favorite holidays.

For Maddy McLellan, Maine Maple Sunday takes the cake.

“It is probably one of my favorite days of the year. I love maple. I love everything maple,” she said. “I would say I look forward to coming to the pancake breakfast here at Grandpa Joe’s. Definitely, the maple cotton candy. I like it when they take the ice cream and put maple syrup on top.”

Maddy’s husband Tyler bears witness to his wife’s love of Maine Maple Sunday.

“She talks about it all year,” he said.

For more than five years when she was growing up, Maddy’s mom brought her to Grandpa Joe’s for the March event. Now, it’s Maddy turn to carry on the tradition. It was the first Maple Sunday ever for her and Tyler’s son Kayne, who is 13 months old.

“He was only about a month old last year — a little too little. So, this is his first one this year,” the proud mom said.

While tasting all the maple products and visiting with people in the community are great ways to pass the time, having live music from The Half Jug Moon Band made it easy to linger longer, the family agreed.  

“It’s cool. I love that they have the music this year. It just makes it even more fun,” Maddie said.  

Her mom Amy Drew weighed in on the agricultural event. 

“It is like the beginning of spring when you come to Maple Sugar Sunday. Maine Maple Sunday — it is the beginning of spring and the winter is almost over. It is about just celebrating spring and being together with other people after a long winter,” Drew said.

The group of family members from three generations were among the people taking part in the 40th annual Maine Maple Weekend, which started on Saturday. The Maine Maples Producers Association (MMPA) promotes the weekend long event that is designed to help with the sales of maple products and to create awareness about the process of tapping trees and making maple syrup. There are hundreds of small sugar houses across the state are open to the public. Maple Sunday always falls on the fourth Sunday of March.

Tyler did not grow up doing Maine Maple Sunday.

“I started going when I started dating her all those years ago,” he said.

He listed his highlights.

“I look forward to the cotton candy. The music was really good. Of course, it was his first time here. That makes it more special,” Tyler said.

“Yeah, the memories are what makes it special. We are making memories,” Maddy said.

Amy agreed.

“We are continuing the tradition with Kayne,” she said.

For Baldwin resident Sydney DePeter, Grandpa Joe’s Sugar House is an essential stop on Maine Maple Sunday. After all, she is friends with one of Joe McKinney’s grand-daughters.

On Sunday afternoon, the two women were standing together watching children on the swing set. DePeter has a 4-year-old son named Gavin.

“Each year, I spend between 45 minutes and hour and a half here,” she estimated. 

“Previously, when I didn’t have a child, I would spend my time talking with everyone in the community. But, now that I have Gavin, he plays with the kids and we’ll eat. He likes to dance to the music,” she said.

She observed that the crowd is a bit bigger than usual.

“I would say it is much busier here than I’ve seen it in past years,” she said.

What is her favorite maple-flavored food?

“I haven’t gotten it yet. But I am a maple whoopie pie fanatic,” DePeter said.

Another mom with two children comes to this particular sugarhouse for the tradition and for the nuts.

“We always come here for the maple nuts. This is the only place I’ve found those,” according to Sara Brown, of New Hampshire.

Her children are Penny, 7, and Howie, 4.

“We have been coming to Maine Maple Sunday since Penny was a baby. My sister and brother-in-law live here. We come every year to just enjoy being in Maine and to spend time with family,” she said.

The delicious food is a draw, too. 

Her children “really like the maple cotton candy and the maple lollipops and all the other little treats like popcorn and French fries,” Brown said.

Sunday is certainly the more popular day for crowds to come out. Still, a smaller crowd gravitated to some of the area sugar house early Saturday before snowflakes started to appear in the air in the late afternoon.

On Saturday, Steve Hayes, of Falmouth, and his wife Carol spent some time at Sweet William’s in Casco. The couple was new to Maine Maple weekend.

“Why did we come here? Our son is named William so Sweet William sounded like a good place to go. That was lure number one. Then, Carol looked at the website and it looked good: A nice assortment of things to do,” he said.

“It was interesting to try the different things: the beans, the maple butter, the doughnuts,” he said. 

“I learned a lot about processing maples syrup,” he said, referring to his tour of the sugarhouse, where the sap is boiled into syrup.

“I will savor the maple syrup on my pancakes even more,” he said, “now that I have the knowledge of how much work goes into it, and I understand more about the processing.”

“We bought syrup. We are going to do a taste test. We got medium and dark. So, we will see which one we like better. Then, we’ll come back and get more,” he said.