ROCKVILLE, Ind. — Parke County in west-central Indiana prides itself with being the covered bridge capital of the world, and rightfully so, since the county has 32 of them - the highest concentration in the nation.

But there’s more to the area than these wooden relics. During the last weekend of February and the first weekend of March, thousands of visitors gather here to celebrate the annual maple syrup harvest. The smaller and lesser-known cousin of the area’s covered bridge festival, the Parke County Maple Syrup Fair has been around for 44 years and is a showcase of local food, artwork and crafts, as well as an opportunity to visit both primitive and modern maple syrup camps in the area.

“This is kind of the first chance for people to come out and do something together after being hunkered down inside all winter. It’s also a good opportunity to teach children about maple syrup production,” said Cathy Harkrider, office manager for Parke County Inc., one of the fair’s sponsors. “And it gives people in Parke County a chance to show that we have a little more than just covered bridges.”

By 10:30 a.m. on the opening day, Harkrider and other volunteers at the festival headquarters at the 4-H Fairgrounds north of Rockville had already served more than 500 pancake and sausage meals, crowned with sweet, golden syrup.

“For some people it’s become tradition to come for the pancake meal, whether the sugar water is running or not,” she said.

Normally, maple syrup producers in Parke County start tapping their trees around Jan. 20, but this year the extended cold snap in Indiana delayed the harvest and forced producers to plough through deep snow to get to the trees.

The opening day of the fair, snowdrifts were blocking access to some of the sugar camps, and none of the five camps in the area were able to demonstrate the syrup-making process. Foxworthy’s Sugar Camp, however, still stayed open to the public.

“This is absolutely the worst year I’ve seen, and I’ve been making maple syrup for over 50 years. But once the sap starts dripping into the buckets, it’s like hearing pennies fall from heaven,” said Archie Foxworthy, who runs the camp near Turkey Run State Park.

Foxworthy and his wife, Mary, moved to their farm in 1950 and started producing syrup with a few hundred buckets as a hobby four years later. When neighbors and friends started asking for the syrup, the couple decided to expand the farm, and to date they have about 2,000 taps on 200 wooded acres.

Over time, selling maple syrup as well as homemade jams and jellies has become an important supplement to Archie and Mary’s farm income. Although Archie’s children and grandchildren now help him run the syrup business, he still welcomes visitors who knock on the door to his two-story farmhouse, wanting to learn about maple syrup production, or even better, get a tour of the primitive sugar shack.

At the honorable age of 91, Archie still makes maple syrup the old-fashioned way, by using a wood burner to heat the sugar water in a large metal pan. The sugar content of maple sap is about 2 percent, so it takes 50-60 gallons of sugar water to make one gallon of syrup, and even more toward the end of the harvest, he explained.

Despite its name, the Maple Syrup Fair is not just about the sweet, sticky pancake topping, it also features an array of local food, arts and crafts. At the festival headquarters, around 30 exhibitors showed their unique goods, ranging from wax-scented teddy bears and wooden portraits to beeswax candles and homemade noodles.

“The festivals are pretty important to Parke County, since we don’t have any factory jobs,” said Larry D. Myers, president of Parke County Inc. Myers himself is a prime example of that trend, since he has turned a woodworking hobby into an important source of revenue aside from growing corn, wheat and soybeans. Myers’ booth boasted Christmas ornaments, rolling pins, wine bottle stoppers and his top seller; jar lids, all made out of wood.

“Farming has changed so much. Twenty years ago everybody had at least some hogs and cattle, but then you had to get really big or have none at all. Now several farmers (in Parke County) get income from tourism,” Myers said.