Round Hill resident Carter Morrow is inviting anyone interested to join in his family’s 2008 Round Hill Maple Syrup Project. Fifty taps are available for loan.
To take part, identify maple trees while leaves are still on and email cmorrow@baycustom.com.
The trees should be tapped in late winter/early spring. Any maple at least a foot in diameter at chest height will do.
The Morrows will help set the tap(s) and show how to collect and store the sap. Collection will begin when nighttime temperatures are below freezing and daytime temperatures get up into 40s.
Every time a good batch of sap (50 gallons or more) is collected, there will be a syrup boil behind the Morrow’s garage at their “sugar shack.”
Participants can attend and help make the syrup.
“It’s a hoot!” Morrow said.
The general practice is that the sap collectors get a third of the syrup from their sap—more if they bring firewood and help hold vigil during the boil.
Syrup boils generally occur on weekends and a lot more beverages are consumed than syrup is produced.
It takes about 30 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup. Each tap can produce several gallons a day when conditions are good. The Morrows made a little over one gallon last year from two taps in one tree.
 

Round Hill residents are enjoying the chance to walk and bike to preschool this fall. The Loudoun Valley Community Center is temporarily operating out of the Round Hill Center on High Street during the renovation of its Purcellville location. The Franklin Park Performing and Visual Arts Center, previously housed in the Round Hill Center, has now moved to its permanent home in the Barns in Franklin Park.
 

Council member John Heyner and Bruce Brownell’s mother, Mac, prepare to officially open the nature park.

By DAVID FERGUSON
Member, Round Hill Town Council
Have you taken a walk in the Town’s nature park?
“What nature park?” you may ask.
A long and narrow band of trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants of a little less than an acre extends southward from the edge of the more developed Town Park on Loudoun Street.
Acquired in the late 1990s through a generous donation of the land by developer Bruce Brownell, the park was dedicated in his memory in a ceremony on July 4.
Originally the site, behind a row of houses on New Cut Road, was basically an overgrown wasteland, often used for trash dumping.
In 1999, with the formation of a committee to develop a plan for the overall park, effort was also initiated to address the portion identified as the “nature” park.
The intent was to enhance the growth of native plants and eliminate exotic species such as multiflora rose, honeysuckle, trumpet vine, English ivy and tree of heaven.
The objective is to create an area that can serve as a representative example, though tiny, of the original natural ecosystem that once covered the Round Hill area.
Caring for and learning from the values of this microcosm of the North Fork Goose Creek Watershed may help us be better stewards of our local environment.
Meanwhile, take a walk along the park’s meandering trails or rest on one of the benches and enjoy what each season brings.
To get involved in this project, or others involving public spaces, please write Dave Ferguson at P.O. Box 224, Round Hill, Va. 20142