MANITOWANING—He figures it may be a one-time only occurrence, but maple syrup made by Steve Bondi of Manitowaning made it to the district level of the Ontario Association of Agricultural Societies competition recently, and won.
“It is going to be a good conversation piece among the members of our family in the future that I had a once in a lifetime award-winning maple syrup,” Mr. Bondi told The Expositor last week. “I just do it for fun and to make maple syrup for my family. It must have happened to be a particularly good batch.”
Mr. Bondi’s maple syrup entry won the competition held at the Manitowaning Fall Fair this fall. “I did win for best maple syrup at the Manitowaning Fall Fair.” However, “Actually my maple syrup was the only one that had been entered properly, so that is the biggest reason it won.”
While he didn’t attend the district competition held recently in Timiskaming, Mr. Bondi’s maple syrup (which was taken to the competition by Alice Pennie) won the district competition.
His maple syrup has now qualified to the next level of competition at the Canadian National Exhibition next summer. However, he indicated he will not be taking part in that competition.
“Making maple syrup is just a little family thing we do in the spring each year,” said Mr. Bondi. “My maple syrup is definitely not as consistently good as the Dewars and Pike Lake, for example.”
Mr. Bondi said, “hopefully there will be more people enter their maple syrup in next year’s Manitowaning Fall Fair, so they can beat the one-time champion. That would be a good thing.”
