Shepherd's 50th Maple Syrup Festival

This past weekend we enjoyed the 50th Shepherd Maple Syrup Festival! This is an event that all of us kids looked forward to when growing up in Shepherd. Since Shepherd has loads of maple trees, they started tapping the trees and making -- maple syrup. The original plan for this event was only a one-day event and it was to earn enough money to finance an eight-week summer recreation program for the children in the Shepherd school district. As the event has grown, it is now a full weekend and the village has been able to; fund a 10-week summer program, maintain a community park, and purchase a plot of land north of Shepherd, where many events will be housed in the future. It has grown a lot since then, with lots of things to do, such as; tractor pulls, carnival rides, a 5K Run, craft/quilt shows, a talent show, the famous pancake and sausage meal (which thousands of meals are served), a pancake eating contest, town wide yard sales, a car show, museum tours (Little Red School House, Train Depot & Sugar Bush "Factory"), chainsaw carver show, antique tractor show, tons of children's activities with the Michigan clowns, several different concerts (symphonic wind ensembles and a country entertainers), fireworks, a parade, and on and on and on. Now you can see why this was such a HUGE event for our little village of Shepherd. As a matter of fact, Shepherd, MI is know as the "Sweetest Little Town Anywhere Around" : ) There are tons of volunteers that make this weekend possible, so I would like to say THANK YOU to all of you out there that helped in anyway! I have always been proud of the little town that I was raised in, especially in April when all of this fun took place. --My sister, my friend Sara and myself participated in the talent show when we were teenagers, so we thought it would be fun to do it with our kids. Sara couldn't go so it was just me and Mary and all of our kiddos. Mary called just before we needed to head out and said she was sick, so...no talent show this year, maybe next year. All in all, we had a great time and plan on going again next year!

Papa couldn't hardly wait to get tickets bought so the kids could ride these rides.
Kallee enjoying the train ride with Keegan. She must have rode this thing a dozen times.

This ride was called "Cliff Hanger" it looked like such a cool ride, Keegan rode it over and over. I was tempted to buy some tickets and give it a try, but I didn't.

The "famous" Super Slide the kids rode on at least 20 times. Kallee would jump off and head right back up the stairs to ride it again. Thanks to my niece Kay, Kallee got to ride this as many times as she wanted. After a few times of me riding it, my backside was

too sore to try it any more : )

Talon, Kallee and Keegan

This was a really neat thing that the US Navy sponsored. It was a free ride, so that made it even better, ha! After riding it, the kids loaded up on all the freebies (water bottles, lapel pins, ink pens, pencils, etc.)

Kallee con-ed Papa into riding the ponies a couple times @$5.00/ride, ugh. When she finished her second ride, I told her that was enough and she looked at Papa and said (with her little finger pointing in the air) "just one more time Papa?!" What a little stinker, she knows how to get her way when it comes to Papa : )

This is the Little Red School House Museum that my parents had their wedding reception in.

The kids sitting in the desks in the Little Red School House. This school was actually used and it has a lot of the original items still in it (pot-belly stove, chalk boards, etc.). It has lots of old, old class pictures in it and lots of old memorabilia from Shepherd High School.

Sitting on the steps in front of the Little Red School House

Keegan the pirate, Kallee as Hello Kitty and Talon the clown. These were some of the free activities presented by the Michigan clowns.

Saturday night ended with fireworks on the north-side of Shepherd. This is something new since I was a kid, we never had fireworks in Shepherd, we had to go to a bigger town if we wanted to see any.

The final event of the weekend is/was on Sunday afternoon. It takes place down the center of town, it is the Maple Syrup Parade. It started at 2:30 and lasted about an hour, it was fun way to wrap up our weekend and head home.

This guy on stilts was walking over the top of everyone sitting/standing along the parade route. He is getting ready to step over Talon & Keegan in this picture.

Shepherd High School band looking their best! When Kallee seen them she said "look at their horsey hats"! I was a part of the marching and concert band every year in high school.

There is always a queen selected from the high school girls for this special event.

The Parade Marshall's were: Mr. & Mrs. Tom Shephard (he was my middle school principal and I graduated with his youngest son, Rob).

This was the tail-end of the parade, it was from a local church. This guy made this little train out of trash cans, it was pretty neat.