FORT KENT, Maine — The University of Maine at Fort Kent on Thursday welcomed more than 300 guests to its annual sucrerie, which features sweet maple treats and traditional Acadian foods.
The Acadian celebration started humbly in 1999 as an event hosted by local teachers. More than a quarter century later, the gathering is still going strong and seeing more guests than ever before.
The French term “sucrerie” roughly translates to sugary or sweet treats, according to UMFK Acadian Archives Director Patrick Lacroix. The early iterations of the event were independent and centered around local maple producers who would make taffy from boiled sap on the snow.
Eventually, the event blossomed to incorporate a large meal on campus. This year’s turnout is one of the largest in its nearly 30-year history, organizers said.
“Last year we had 250 people,” said Joseph Gervais, general manager at Sodexo and of food services at UMFK. “This year we’re expecting 300 or 325. That would be our biggest turnout yet.”
The menu is built with traditional Acadian flavors, Gervais said. Standouts include the salade dejeuner, which has field greens tossed with an onion and sour cream based dressing, and tourtiere, a French Canadian meat pie.
One of his favorite items is the pot en pot, a traditional dish that does not get served as often. It was historically made with three game meats, usually venison, rabbit, and a game fowl, he said. Those are not available to serve at such a quantity, so they instead use a layer of beef, then a layer of chicken and finally pork. This is all layered with dumplings in between.
Even in a commercial kitchen, it took a day and a half to prep everything, Gervais said.
The university’s kitchen was busy all morning and throughout the day with 15 people working on cooking and serving the traditional meals. Gervais arrived at about 5 a.m., and while many staff left at 2 p.m.,, the kitchen later served dinner.
“This is probably the biggest [event] that comes directly through the dining hall,” Gervais said. “Which is really nice because we have so many students that are international and come from other places, and it’s one of the few days where we can show them the Acadian tradition for the area that they’re coming to.”
The meal itself has grown along with the attendance numbers, Lacroix said. Historically, this part of the event shares similarities with the Mi Careme, a large Acadian feast that would be held in the middle of Lent.
“Families would take a pause to indulge a little bit,” he said. “So they’d have a meal with richer dishes, pork and certainly sweet goods as well, and maybe a little bit of alcohol along the way, as well as at the end of Lent. So both of those kind of roughly coincide with the maple tapping season and certainly the season that we’re in right now.”
Fort Kent was one of several Maine communities to participate in Maine Maple Sunday Weekend, an event in which maple producers invite the public to see, and taste, what they have to offer.
Outside of Nowland Hall, where the big meal was served, Northwoods Nectar offered maple taffy on crushed ice. The business is owned by Holly Hardwick and her husband, Steve Hardwick.
They started in 2012 with 1,000 taps, and they’re now up to 5,700 trees that they tap, Holly Hardwick said. They have participated in the sucrerie for the past six years.
Holly and her best friend, Tammi Picard, heated up the taffy and served it to guests throughout the Thursday event. It’s a favorite time for Hardwick, who said she will continue to serve taffy at the sucrerie as long as she can.
“As long as I’m upright,” she said.