Maple sugar production has been an important part of Mumford for centuries. And now, so is the Maple Sugar Festival.

“Genesee Country Museum has been celebrating the Maple Festival for, whew, decades,” said Adam Henne, the director of the nature center at the Genesee Country & Village Museum.

This festival is about more than just the maple syrup. It’s also about the history that got it here.

“It goes back all the way before Europeans were ever here,” Henne said. “It was Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe people who discovered the sugar and maple trees and began extracting it and settlers learned it from them. So it’s got a long, long history right here in this region.”

It’s giving community members like Bryn Mugnolo, a historical interpreter for the museum, a chance to honor history while sharing it with others.

“We are of course in our early 19th-century garb, so we’re showing how this would’ve been happening in the early part of the century out in an area like this, out in New York state, this is where they would’ve been doing it then,” said Mugnolo.

It’s allowing Mugnolo the ability to show the region's history instead of just talking about it.

“It’s important to look back and pay homage to the people and things that have taught us how to live today,” she said. “In particular, we are on Haudenosaunee land, going back to those traditions, maple sugaring being a huge one, and paying our respect and acknowledging the debt that we owe to other people, and how coming together has really allowed us things like maple.”

Individuals can learn all about how maple sugar would have been made in the 19th century, tap maple trees and visit the modern-day sugar house to see sap boiled into sugar as a way to give them a greater appreciation for the gifts of nature in the place they call home and the people who discovered them.

“So I would say it’s a celebration not only of coming together, as a people in this area but also a way of looking back on the gifts that we’ve been given,” Mugnolo said.