LISBON, Ohio – A retired dentist has gone from extracting teeth to pulling sap from maple trees in a woods he started planting on his Ohio farm a half century ago.

Making maple syrup happened suddenly for Dr. Thomas Emerson and his helpers.

The 92-year-old Emerson does the tapping and carries some of the five gallon buckets of sap from the maple trees to holding tanks in the sugar shack.

His daughter, Susan Nutter, primarily bottles the syrup after the sap is boiled down mostly by her husband, Scott, who brings in wood to fuel the evaporator.

Nutter said the winter doldrums are now a thing of the past at the 65-acre farm her father and 86-year-old mother purchased near Youngstown in 1971.

She and her husband also live on the farm just a short distance from her parents, who occupy the original farm house built in 1806.

“It kind of makes the winter not seem quite as cold and long. It’s fun,” she said.

Share croppers were allowed to continue farming the ground while Emerson focused on his dental practice. It wasn’t long before he started grabbing a shovel after work and planting trees himself.

With just a handful of trees in front of the farm house, Nutter said her father wanted to provide a wind break and attract more wildlife. He planted maple, white oak, black walnut, pine and other varieties of trees every year until practically running out of space.

Emerson was 83 when he worked his last filling.

It was about that time when Nutter and Scott first met and, while showing him the farm, he asked beside a grove of maple trees “if we ever tapped for syrup.”

“The next thing you know he’s buying taps and figuring out how to boil,” she said.

It didn’t take long for Nutter and her father to also dive into learning the age old craft.

Nutter, always fascinated by bees, also started making honey after Scott, a computer software engineer, later asked if there was something she always wanted to try but never did.

He bought her a starter bee hive kit for their first Christmas together. “My thought in my brain was he does listen when I talk. I might have to marry him,” she said.

Starting slowly, the family simply gave away the few gallons of syrup and honey they churned out but later raised production and started a business, “Bees and Trees at Locust Lake Farm.”

Both products come with a price now to recover the cost of production. Nutter was up to 50 hives before recently scaling back to 34 hives because of the amount of work involved.

Tapping the trees he planted one at a time appears to have brought Emerson full circle because the birds and other animals he wanted to attract came in droves.

Woodpeckers, red tailed hawks, barn owls, deer, fox, rabbit and a variety of other species frequent the grounds.

The land is a designated tree farm and certified more than 20 years ago as a wildlife sanctuary by the National Wildlife Association.

The farm also contains an orchard of five apple trees and one Asian pear tree.

A small amount of blueberries, raspberries, grapes and other fruit are raised on the property. “Our hobbies keep us busy,” Nutter said.