Miles and miles of plastic tubes crisscross in Tom Salo’s backyard woods. He walks alongside them, footsteps crunching in the snow. Here, the sap will soon flow. It will trickle from trees and across these zigzags, gather in a pump house and then stream into the sugar house, where it will boil and transform.
This is modern maple syrup production, right here in Northeast Ohio.
Interest in maple syrup itself has grown in recent years, particularly since the coronavirus pandemic. Buyers want to know what they’re consuming, and many are interested in knowing where their food comes from, Salo says. That bodes well for local producers, who pride themselves on ingredients found in their own backyards.
“You look at Aunt Jemima syrup, or the processed syrup — you look at some of the ingredients in there and you certainly question that,” Salo says. “Then you look at a one ingredient product, where it’s maple sap turned into maple syrup."
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Salo’s fallen in love with that product. He built the small sugar house himself using his years of construction experience and reclaimed materials. It started as one room, and then he built additions — more space for firewood, for larger amounts of collected tree sap. It’s like an addiction, he tells us, glancing at the dusty metal buckets he first started with, near the wood-fired stove that furiously boils all 45 gallons of sap into singular gallons of maple syrup. A row of maple leaf-shaped award plaques are neatly tacked to a beam.
Last season was Salo’s most productive, and most acclaimed, year of maple syrup-making yet. He broke his production record with about 385 gallons of syrup, and he also took home the prestigious grand champion award, producer class, at the Geauga County Maple Festival.
Out here, in the snow and quiet of the woods, as he scans the lines for squirrel chews (or even, an occasional bear chew), Salo is in his element.
He’s spent much of his life outside, during his work in construction and as a park ranger for Lake Metroparks and Geauga Park District, where he was first introduced to maple syrup making through park programs. Inspired, he started his home system of 55 maple tree taps, and the operation has grown to more than 1,000 taps today (800 on his property, and 300 at nearby Hershey Montessori school).
He joins a thriving community of maple producers in Geauga County, including nearby friend Kevin Holy, who runs Seldom Seen Farms.
A few years ago, Holy stepped away from his former job as a county equipment operator and make maple syrup full time. “I had a good government job, and I didn’t have time for the government job and the hobby, so I quit the government job, like any responsible person would do,” Holy says, laughing. “I figured that I would have to give it a run because I didn’t want to be old and retired and wonder if this ever worked.”
He won’t have to wonder. Holy’s taken his operation from a hobby, first using a turkey fryer boil syrup in his early seasons, and turned it into a whole business, producing a couple thousand gallons of both traditional and bourbon barrel-aged syrup each year, available to purchase on his website. A rack of bourbon barrels in his small warehouse features a few blue ribbons and awards, marking Holy’s achievements in maple syrup and barbecue sauce.
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In early 2020, Holy’s robust production systems allowed him to lend a helping hand to Salo, who underwent cancer treatment around the same time that coronavirus touched Ohio.
“2020, the week of the shutdown, was my first week of chemo,” Salo says, “and Kevin stepped up. He was here with me when I got the call, and he was the one to say, ‘If you can get it to me, I can boil it.’ So that essentially saved my season.”
“I think all sugar makers are always looking out for each other,” Holy says. “When Tom got sick, he just couldn’t do it that year. He got his trees tapped, and then me and another local guy helped him boil. And it was just kind of like, whatever you need help with, bring it over, and we’ll make it work. We’ll do something to get your syrup done. And he made it through that year. And here, we are still helping each other out. That’s where we really became friends, and that’s where we really bonded.”
Here in Montville, a handful of maple syrup producers work in tandem, part of Geauga County’s 20 or so that are recognized by Ohio Maple Producers Association (which includes about 100 sugar houses in Ohio). The state was once the largest producer of maple syrup in the country in the 1800s. Since then, it’s fallen behind places like Vermont and Wisconsin, Holy says.
It’s no surprise seeing the county’s flag, emblazoned with a maple leaf and stars: Geauga is the heart of Northeast Ohio’s maple syrup industry. That pride is on full view at the county Maple Syrup Festival, held every April (this year, April 25-28). Holy serves as the festival’s contest chairman, helping to judge about 150 entries from maple syrup makers across the country — many of which are from Greater Cleveland.
Maple syrup: in Northeast Ohio, it’s the ultimate local product.
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