On The Mark: Still peeling popple after all these years

Walking south and west from home, over moraines left by the last glacier, I follow the chainsaw sound, pausing to watch a chestnut-sided warbler. Veering off trail, I find my brother Steve peeling popple and, not far beyond, my husband downing a huge one.

For a third week in May, Rod, at 80 years old, is out making firewood for winter home heating and year-round saunas.

"I've harvested and peeled popple since I was 10 years old," Rod says. People often ask him why he's still at it - just to save money? "It's because I learned long ago to live as holistically as possible. When I'm peeling popple and burning firewood, it's good for my mind, body and soul. And it's good for the environment."

It's also a great way to heat the home - the best wood for stove and chimney, with minimal pollutants and no creosote. You don't have to clean your chimney.

"And," he says, "it returns nutrients to nature. When you peel the bark off and leave it in the woods, it goes back into the soil, usually within a year."

How did he start? After World War II, the Walli family moved back from Duluth, where Rod's dad had worked in the shipyards, to South Finn Road and grandfather Walli's farm. Rod recalls that as kids they were paid by the piece to peel popple, a nickel for an 8-foot, 4-inch stick. "I watched my brothers, who had watched Dad. There's really not much teaching involved. Just pick up a peeling iron and go to it."

They sold the peeled popple to Northwest Paper Company in Cloquet. At home, the family burned birch.

At age 13, Rod bought a 40-acre plot with money he'd made living with and helping out a relative who had broken her arms and some ribs. With $375, he invested in a handsaw, a double-bit ax, and stumpage. He harvested 90 cords of popple off the plot.

"I weighed 115 pounds and was 5 feet, 3 inches tall. I never thought of myself as spindly. I wasn't big compared to my classmates. But I was all muscle and gumption, or what Finns call sisu."

Rod harvested 30-some cords that first year. "I felt good about it. Most of it I logged and peeled myself. I hauled it out to the landing using my dad's tractor and a two-wheeled trailer." He reaped $22 a cord, a lot of money in those days.

During college, Rod came home on weekends and Christmas and worked with other loggers, mostly Frank Erickson and Wally Issacson. They logged in spruce swamps. Rod earned 10 cents for each peeled stick. He bought another 40 acres of stumpage from Carlton County and 4,400 board-feet of pine from Fond du Lac Forest. "I was sometimes working both on the railroad and peeling popple. It's a fever, an illness, working in the woods."

What's involved in harvesting popple? First, choosing the right time. "In May, the sap, like in a maple, begins to run between the tree and the bark. That allows the bark to slide off more easily. In July or August, you won't be able to do this."

It takes gear and know-how. You need a good chainsaw. And a peeling iron. Rod's is made from a leaf of a car spring, sharpened at one end.

You choose a tree and where you want it to fall. To peel, you place the sharpened end of the peeler under the bark and pull along the length of the tree. It can be challenging.

"You have to make sure you don't get the iron stuck in the tree or in the bark. As a piece of bark loosens, you can yank a strip up off the tree."

I enjoyed watching the two deftly pull lengths off, aided by the slickness of the wet underbark. A wave of liberated bark undulates up the tree.

What happens next? The trees lie out there, drying up and hardening. In the fall, Rod loads them into a trailer destined for the woodshed. There he splits the big ones and cuts sauna-length logs. In the shed, he piles them neatly, where we retrieve them, fall to early spring, for our woodstove. The rougher wood goes into the sauna shed.

"I still enjoy it," Rods says. "Peeling is what I do to keep in shape. It's peaceful out there, once you turn the chainsaw off. Once you've dropped your trees. The body gives you good feedback. You're getting in shape again. The mind and the spirit are renewed."

Ann Markusen is a Pine Knot board member and lives in Red Clover Township.