Blair Recalls Chamber’s History with Maple Syrup
Maple syrup is golden in Geauga County.
Maple syrup is golden in Geauga County.
No one knows that better than Tom Blair Sr., a Geauga County native, Burton businessman and village council member who has been part of the area’s maple syrup culture through thick and thin for nearly seven decades.
“Maple syrup-making gets in your blood,” he said during a recent interview.
Sitting by a fire in the Burton Chamber of Commerce log cabin on Burton Square, Tom, 81, shared his earliest memories of tapping sugar maple trees in the front yard of his family’s farm, boiling it down to what he now knows was substandard syrup.
“We made some god-awful syrup — but it was sweet,” he laughed.
While in high school — now the Burton Library — Tom said he would be called out of study hall to help empty buckets of sap from the trees on the square across the street.
After high school, he drove trucks for 25 years for Cleveland Freight Lines, owned by Carl Munn, and then for Blair Cartage in Newbury — both now defunct.
His father, Ken Blair Sr., was a member of the Burton Chamber of Commerce. Ken and Virginia Blair attended the chamber meetings and, when his father passed away in 1974, Tom started going to the monthly gatherings with his mother.
In 1984, Tom learned Chuck Molnar, a chamber member, wanted to sell Geauga Door Sales and Service. They struck a deal and Tom became a business owner, conveniently less than a mile from the chamber’s log cabin on the square.
In fact, there are two cabins on the square. The cabin on the north side is set up for production with a reverse osmosis machine that removes water from the sap, transforming it into Geauga County’s famous golden liquid, Tom said.
The southern cabin, built in the 1960s and connected to its neighbor by a portico, is the visitors’ center and retail store where tourists and locals alike buy a wide variety of items produced in and around the county.
Both cabins are built of oak logs chinked with cement to keep the weather out. Dark plank doors welcome visitors to the retail cabin and a stone fireplace warms the pioneer spirit of tourists and the chamber’s three employees behind the counter.
The original cabin on the square was built in the 1920s, after chamber members visited the Lincoln Cabin in Kentucky, Tom recalled, adding they came home and designed a structure reminiscent of that cabin.
After it burned in the late 1950s, the chamber rebuilt along the same lines and continued using the rather cramped space for production.
Demand for the syrup keeps the tradition alive.
The chamber’s annual Tree Tappin’ Ceremony on the square usually coordinates with the rise of sap in the maple trees. This year, event is scheduled for Feb. 8, Tom said.
The amount of sap the Burton Square maples yield is only a fraction of what the chamber needs to answer the public’s demand for syrup, maple sugar and maple candy.
“We buy from local suppliers,” Tom said.
In January, the chamber sends out letters to those who tap trees in a sugar bush asking how many stainless steel barrels they expect to need. The tapper will return the enclosed card and the barrels will be delivered to them in time to be filled with 50 to 60 gallons of sap, Tom said.
“The end of March or the beginning of April, we pick them up, full. Then, we start,” he said.
Scott Adams and other chamber volunteers collect the barrels, process the sap and put the sweet stuff back in the barrels for future sale, he added.
“We can it as we need it,” Tom said, gesturing to the containers of syrup for sale in the cabin. “When the shelves get empty, we fill them up.”
