Message from the WVMSPA President: March 21 Maple Day and Coronavirus

WVMSPA Members

The second Maple Day of the year is rapidly approaching on Saturday, March 21st, and there are a lot of questions/concerns about how the WVMSPA and the Maple Day sugar shacks and associated businesses should approach the Coronavirus Pandemic.

I am sure you have all seen the same news that I have seen:  WVU is extending spring break and then moving classes to on-line.  WVU is prohibiting meetings of 100 people or greater.  Travel from Europe is banned, and large conferences and sporting events have been canceled.  Eastern WV Community and Technical College has canceled their Maple Day bus tour, and the Highland County Maple Festival has been postponed indefinitely.

On the other hand, there are no known cases of COVID-19 in West Virginia and the local schools and businesses are still operating on a normal schedule (albeit with increased sanitization).  Further, I am not aware of any formal guidance in WV that businesses should curtail or shutdown.

With the Coronavirus situation as it now stands in WV, my thoughts are that the small Maple Day gatherings are similar to many other business activities that are still continuing as usual, and therefore can continue as planned.  However, each individual sugar shack and/or associated business should evaluate the specific risk at their particular location and then decide to continue or not.  Also, the situation is very fluid and could change in the next week.

Certainly, any participating sugar shacks should follow the WVU Extension and other general sanitation recommendations (attached below), and/or follow recommendations from the CDC (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html) .  Certainly increased public sanitation is a necessity.

Finally, any sugar shacks that decide to cancel, please let Tina Barton (webmaster@wvmspa.org) know so that she can update the website, and sugar shacks that plan to continue and participate should make sure that there is a good phone number on the website so that people can call to confirm.

Further, at my request, Luke and Karen at Future Generation have scheduled a “ZOOM” call Thursday, March 12 (tonight) at 7:00 pm, so that anyone that is interested can call and discuss their thoughts about Maple Days and the Coronavirus.

Keith

Notes from Tina: If you did not receive an email regarding the Zoom virtual meeting tonight and want to chime in, please contact me (webmaster@wvmspa.org) for details. It’s for members only.

Also I’m working on a Coronavirus “Useful Link”. In a couple hours it will be ready – look on the right-hand column on the home page, www.wvmspa.org.

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