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The Yooper tradition of peeling poplar

Karen Wils photo Above, a poplar tree harvested and peeled by a beaver is shown.

ESCANABA — A hand tool called a spud still hangs on a rusty nail in the woodshed at camp.

You may be a seasoned Yooper if you can recall peeling poplar trees. If you even know what a poplar (pronounced “popple” in the U.P.) is, it defines you as being a native of the wonderful north woods.

Just mentioning peeling poplar may bring a moan or groan from the older men-folk around your kitchen table.

Many a teenage boy living in the U.P. turned his boyish biceps into man-ish muscles by peeling poplar in the spring of the year. Lots of “first cars” were paid for by earning money harvesting these trees.

Poplar is a native tree belonging to the aspen family. In Michigan poplar is a low-ranking tree — an undesirable.

This tree grows up super-fast after a cutting, fire or flood. It is the beaver’s favorite food. Its buds are gobbled up by the grouse in the spring time. Its bark helps the hares survive the harsh winters.

In Colorado, the poplar is royalty. Its quaking aspen colors in autumn are the gold that tourists flock to see.

Our U.P. aspens are awesome too, but in a low-key way. They are an important stepping stone to a healthy forest. In the natural succession of things, first comes poplar; as they shade the ground, the balsam and spruce grows. Then comes the lofty, soft maples, and the white beauties, the birches take root.

Poplar peeling is done only in the spring when the moisture between the layers of bark is slick. The spud — the slightly C-shaped, blunt, beaver-tail-looking tool — is used like a lever.

After the poplar trees were harvested with a chainsaw, they were piled in a crisscross order. A slit was made in the smooth gray bark for spuds to be inserted.

Then loggers peeled them!

Many old-timers can still feel the slippery, wet mess of peeling. The springtime smell of mud and the tickle of black flies mixed in with the spit of poplar.

After the skinned logs dried and the fuzzy brown inner bark (“monkey do-do”) decayed away, the poplar was sold to the paper mill. Nowadays, the new process at paper mills doesn’t require de-barking poplar.

Back in the day though, good popple peelers meant a good profit. My brother and cousins and many other young bucks got jobs in the woods. Peeling competitions often broke out. Even though the young fellas did well, there was a logging legend named “Bud’ who whistled, yodeled and wheeled a spud like magic. Bud could always out peel them all!

It would be so interesting to challenge our young people of today to put down their cell phones and pick up a spud and see how many trees they could peel in a day.

Poplar of the U.P., even though it doesn’t take center stage, is still a valuable resource used for lumber, paper, and particle board.

It is so very important for wildlife habitat. And it is every bit as pretty in the fall as the quaking aspens of the West.

So, if you remember the joys of peeling popple, share your stories with the younger generation.

——

Karen (Rose) Wils is a lifelong north Escanaba resident. Her folksy columns appear weekly in Lifestyles.

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