Maple producers, like people in all vocations, can recount events in their lines of work that can be complained of as trouble or viewed as interesting happenstances, or be turned into a good chuckle.

Pesky raccoons can account for many of these stories, like pulling the bung from an oldie-time barrel and dipping out what they could with a paw. They've been known to unscrew a lid from jugs in a sugar house and even attempt to take a jug out the door with them.

Most folks find baby animals in the wild pretty cute. Take fawns for example. One producer in Somerset County had to replace 200 of his 1,200 drop lines this year because the fawns were using them as "teethers." Bears get accused of just plain tearing down the lines and a row of roosting wild turkeys can put a sag in your pipeline.


One story about squirrels comes from a producer in the upper Pennsylvania, lower New York area. The squirrels were nipping off pieces of the drop lines and later they found a hollow tree stuffed with little 2 and 3-inch pieces of plastic tubing. Perhaps the squirrels thought they would age until winter and be palatable.

When dealing with the serious side of natural resources there always seem to be pros and cons and the maple industry has its own challenges. Does tapping a maple tree hurt the tree?

Well, yes and no. If you plan to use the tree as a sap supplier for many years and you use careful procedures and well designed spiles, your tree will last a lot longer than you will. But let a lumberman watch you drill holes in the beautiful maple planks he envisions and he'll need to grit his teeth.

If your tapped maple tree is heading to the sawmill, he'll tell you that an unblemished tree's 1 inch at the bottom is worth 1 foot at the top. In the 2 foot to 5 foot height of the tree that you tapped he will encounter clean holes at best, some staining, and at worst, possible rotting from a taphole that got bacteria invasion.

So the inches from the bottom up to your highest tap depreciate the value pretty fast.

However, in talking with a retired sawmill man, who also likes maple syrup, we came across an interesting niche market for this blemished maple wood. Most people in this area know Johnstown was a steel capitol of the nation and quite famous for its "rolling mills." A lot of this work moved on to Pittsburgh and to Weirton, W.Va.

However, the principle is still the same. The billet of steel is heated to red hot and moves to the rollers (think giant steel, old-time washing machine rollers) to be pressed. These rollers need entry supports and wedges that have perfectly smooth surfaces of a very hard wood.

A hole in the wood doesn't hurt, but a knot could nick the steel. It was explained to me that the steel could go through many sets of rollers until the desired thickness or shape was attained, so many supports and wedges were needed. They were replaced every day and sometimes twice a day so it took a lot of 36-inch to 5 1/2 foot  pieces.

Of course, that meant a lot of unusable wood at the end of a day because the wood was subjected to intensive water and mineral oil pressure. The wood came out three times as heavy as when placed. Not good for the household furnace.

Maple is not the only wood used but is a favorite along with cherry, beech and hickory, but not oak, because oak will stain the steel.

Bob Shaulis, of the Sipesville area, told me that he hauled a truckload a week to Weirton, W.Va. and they planed the wood. He referred me to Dalton King of the Kingwood area (King and Bungard Lumber), who told me that he not only supplies the wood to various rolling mills across the nation, but does the meticulous planing and says it is a time consuming slow process because it calls for specific and different angles depending on what use they have for the shaped steel. He's now almost a one of a kind in this area of lumbering.

Back to that maple tree; if it's looking to be cut you can anticipate holes or damage to possibly 7 inches in, and yes, you can use the interior for mine posts.

Hey, here's another maple story. Duane Duncan of Erie County always makes this dish on Good Friday. Cook narrow noodles and then saute them in a skillet until dry. Pour them into a bowl and sprinkle with dry cracker or bread crumbs. Serve with maple syrup to be poured by the "eater."

Here's an additional recipe, presented by Dorothea Welch, that was a big favorite at the February maple tapping ceremony:

SOFT GINGER COOKIES (with maple icing)

1 cup white sugar