Northern Woodlands

Features - Archive

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The Root of the Problem

June 01, 2008

As far as trees are concerned, root damage is the root of all evil. Well, most of it, anyway. No matter what symptoms are visible – early fall color (a sign of stress), sudden death of branches, twig dieback, pale or unusual leaf color, slow growth, even some diseases and insect infestations – the problem is likely belowground.


The Rural Immigration Law

June 01, 2008


Woodland Grasses

June 01, 2008


The Porcupine’s Palate

June 01, 2008


Marking Timber

June 01, 2008

We are easy to spot. Look for boots spattered with blue paint.

Blue paint dots our wool hats in the winter and speckles our hair and baseball caps in the summer. In the fall, because the accumulation of paint turns our once brightly colored orange vests into a strange camouflage, some of us tie orange marking tape to …


Rust in Peace

June 01, 2008

“There’s a place called Faraway Meadow
We never shall mow in again,
Or such is the talk at the farmhouse:
The meadow is finished with men.”

--From “The Last Mowing,” by Robert Frost

The steel-wheeled hay elevator, once used for loading loose hay into a wagon now seems out of …


The Thunderstorm Mill: Making Lumber the Old-Fashioned Way

March 01, 2008

Water power. Our ancestors, those stalwart souls who headed off into the wilderness to build new settlements, depended on it. They dammed streams and rivers to power the mills that were essential to those early, self-sufficient communities. The flowing water sawed their lumber and ground their grain, and, once the land had been cleared for farming, even kept their milk …


North Country Numbers: A New Look at the Forest-Based Economy

March 01, 2008

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Photo by Charles H. Willey
Imagine yourself driving into a North Country town one afternoon and finding a business there that employed 92,771 people and turned out $14.4 billion in manufactured products. You’d probably ask yourself, “Who are these guys? And how come I’ve never heard of …

Tale of the Tick: How Lyme Disease is Expanding Northward

March 01, 2008

It’s only natural to take a human-centered view of the world. Through this lens, Lyme disease is a ferocious malady that is on the march north. In New Hampshire, researchers recently found that 70 percent of black-legged ticks sampled in Concord were infected with the disease. In Vermont, Lyme disease cases doubled in 2006, then doubled again in 2007. In …


Clearing the Air: Outdoor Wood Boilers Face Regulation

March 01, 2008

Tom Powers, a retired Air Force tech sergeant and a member of the Peru Town Council, keeps an eye on a wide range of issues that affect this northeastern New York town – zoning problems, the local water supply, road maintenance. Over the last couple of years, one of the top items on his agenda has been the plumes of …


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