Many years ago, in 1990, the Summit County Farm Bureau Board of Trustees established The Summit County Farm Bureau Distinguished Service Award as a means to recognize members for their outstanding service. Specifically, it is the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a member. The award is given to a bona fide farmer who has made an outstanding contribution to their local community and the industry of agriculture. Choosing a worthy recipient from the many qualified members can be difficult for the three previous winners, who are assigned the task.
This year’s honoree has been a Summit County Farm Bureau member since the mid 1990’s, initially joining to get the discount on their insurance. It wasn’t long after, when attending one of our maple syrup seminars, that they met Carrie and Wayne Arnold, who introduced them to many Summit County Farm Bureau activities and they were “hooked”. Our recipient has participated on various committees and volunteered at a wide variety of our activities and events throughout the years – at our annual Farmers’ Share Breakfasts, at our Plow to Chow dinners on the farm, represented us at the National Ag In The Classroom conferences and even served as an educator on our Ag Mobile for a time.
Our recipient’s roots to farming and the country life can be found in her DNA. Her grandparents were farmers in “the old country” who might have left that life behind when they immigrated to Cleveland after WW II. But no, gardening continued to be an important part of their lives which was passed on to her father and in turn, that passion passed on to our recipient.
A 1993 graduate of THE Ohio State University, with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering, she married in 1994 and settled on their wooded acreage in Copley where they embarked on the hobby of maple syrup and beekeeping. They have grown that small 20 tap hobby in 1999 to 375 taps in 2023.
She became a stay-at-home mom in 1998, with the birth of her first son, where she “honed” her gardening and landscaping skills for a number of years and welcomed the birth of her second son. Once her boys were grade school age, she took these skills she had mastered and started a gardening and landscape business which has grown to approximately 40 regular and many one-time clients supported by her and two full time plus several part time employees. This naturally led to her becoming a Master Gardener.
While her sons were attending Arrowhead Elementary School, she became involved in the school’s “Nature Zone”, a 3 acre land lab where students can learn about nature and more importantly, “where food comes from”. Within a few years, she developed programs that had 100% weekly participation. Raising chickens and pigs at her home, she was tapped to develop a working chicken coop where the students incubated chicken eggs and then went on to raise and care for the chickens throughout the school year. A side note: that chicken coop was purchased by the Summit County Farm Bureau and delivered by Carrie and Wayne Arnold. The eggs were collected and used for breakfasts at school functions or donated to the local food bank. To honor her many years of service, a maple tree was planted in the “Nature Zone” in her name
Our recipient has spent many years supporting her boys, both husband and sons, through their many activities and hobbies from music, academic challenge and boy scouts to restoring classic cars, as well as the development of the Mularcik Family Welding Scholarship. In fact, not wanting to be left at home when her husband and sons went off to hunt, she became an avid deer hunter under the tutelage of her eldest son. And although her sons are grown and virtually on their own, she still bags between one to three deer per year between hunting in West Virginia and on her own 14 acres in Copley Township.
Please help us show our appreciation to our 2023 Distinguished Service Award recipient, Paula Mularcik!