ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, February 24, 1997 TAG: 9702240078
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DOE HILL
IN HIGHLAND COUNTY, maple syrup producers are working like crazy to keep up with Mother Nature in all her sweetness.
Ray Eagle tromped through the muddy snow to the gnarled trunk of a 300-year-old sugar maple tree. All the way around, from knee-high to eye-level, nickel-sized holes pocked the thick gray bark.
``If you bore by the light of the moon, the holes heal a little quicker,'' he explained. ``Some people say I'm superstitious, but I've seen it happen.''
Eagle, 80, turned his attention to the small steel tap sunk into a small new hole. Cold, very clear sap dripped into a 5-gallon bucket.
In his childhood, he recalled, this grand tree often wore a half-dozen buckets. Old age has slowed its flow.
But most everything else about making maple syrup has quickened.
Tractors and trailers have replaced the horse-drawn sleds Eagle once used to haul wooden casks of sap from the orchards to the sugar house. Oil and wood-fired evaporators have replaced the cast iron kettles hung over open fires. And much of the sap is no longer collected by hand.
``When I took over, that's what I had to do,'' said Eagle's son, Jay, who now runs Eagle's Sugar Camp in northern Highland County.
Jay Eagle has replaced many of the buckets on his 1,400 to 1,800 maple trees with plastic tubing, which drains the sap into large vats. That allows him to collect larger quantities at a time.
Despite the advances in technology since his dad's era, the work is grueling and exhausting, and it can be difficult to find laborers who will do it.
The art of making syrup is part folklore, part science. Trees usually are tapped by mid-February and closed by late March, depending on the weather. For the sap to run, the temperature must fluctuate from just below to just above freezing.
As Ivan R. Puffenbarger of Blue Grass put it: ``When that stuff starts running, there ain't no stopping it.''
Especially the way he does it. Puffenbarger is the county's undisputed king of maple syrup gadgetry, a former dairy farmer who has hooked a vacuum-pump milking machine to 800 maple trees.
About 20 miles of plastic tubing connect the trees and send a steady stream of sap back to the humming milker in his sugar shack. It works somewhat like a giant Wet-Dry Vac.
Puffenbarger figures 30,000 people will tour his sugar shack during the Highland Maple Festival next month. The shop walls are plastered with photos of visiting dignitaries, including U.S. Sen. John Warner and former Gov. Mills Godwin.
Highland County is Virginia's chief producer of maple syrup, with 5,000 to 6,000 gallons each season. Vermont, by comparison, will make about a half-million gallons.
LENGTH: Medium: 59 linesby CNB