Featured Articles
How to Help Your Best Trees Grow
If we were to arrange optimal conditions for growing the perfect tree, we would provide a site that’s a perfect match for the species’ particular needs. It would begin its life in strong competition with trees of similar size. I’m partial to sugar maple, so let’s assume the tree is…(more)
The Forecast Calls for Birds
Songbirds pouring from the skies before dawn. Thousands of hawks gliding past a mountain summit. Rare oceanic birds blown in to shore. Birdwatching like this doesn’t necessarily begin when you go outside. It begins with a weather forecast the day before. Weather can generate spectacular birding. Consider the spring fallout,…(more)
At Work Milling Ship Masts with “Duke” Besozzi
When Charles “Duke” Besozzi looks at a big tree, he sees bowsprits, masts, and decking in its contours. This is a change from what he used to see when he was a commercial logger for the general market. These days he’s more of a broker, locating the specialty timber needed…(more)
Dirt and Blossom
In the late 1920s, Franklin and Leslie had a lean-to camp in the Toma country, smack in the middle of nowhere at all, back then. Timber got moved on water in those long decades before the lumber companies cut roads almost everywhere. You can drive a car right to the…(more)
How Can I Tell if My Woods are Old Growth?
Old-growth forests, sometimes simply called “old growth,” are just that: really old woods. Accordingly, they are marked by the presence of exceptionally old, typically large-diameter trees that are living, dying, and dead. For most forest types in our region, this likely means there are trees exceeding 150 years old and…(more)
Ghost Moose: Winter Ticks Take Their Toll
The tracks and splattered blood stains in the snow told the story. Hours before, a cow moose trotted through the deep late-March snowpack and, where she passed, drops of blood, patches of hair covered with tick feces, and dislodged ticks revealed that she was host to thousands of winter ticks,…(more)
The Great Glyphosate Debate
It seems almost quaint, or perhaps naïve, to imagine a time, not too too long ago, when black and white film strips proclaimed the wonders of chemistry and suburban children danced gleefully behind fumigators in fluffy, white clouds of pesticide. We live in a more skeptical time today, and for…(more)
Clouds: More Than Meets the Sky
I grew up near the water in Brunswick, Maine, where warm mornings are often shrouded in a thick deck of clouds. On the coastal plain, moist south winds cool as they pass over the chilly waters of the Gulf of Maine, causing blankets of fog. It can be mid-morning before…(more)
From the Center
As you read this, presses are rolling on our newest publication, More Than a Woodlot: Getting the Most from Your Family Forest. The book is written by Northern Woodlands founder and former publisher Stephen Long, with contributions from several other authors familiar to our readers. In More Than a Woodlot,…(more)
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This continuous arm Windsor chair by Vermont craftsman George Ainley could be yours. Tickets are $20 each and only 400 will be sold. Support Northern Woodlands and buy your tickets today!
Editor's Blog
Political Gamesmanship
My inbox has been full, of late, with press releases about the Sportsman’s Heritage Act, a hodge-podge of a bill that recently passed the House of Representatives. Some environmental…(more)
What in the Woods Is That?
What on The Web is That?
Our popular What in the Woods is That? contest is a bit different this time around, with a video of editor Dave Mance III quizzing you on your firewood identification…
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The Outside Story
Life in the Wild: Live Hard, Die Young
Have you noticed a few more wisps of gray of late? An ache in your joints? Crow’s feet clawing around the corners of your eyes? If so, you’re well on your way to becoming a victim of one of…(more)
Recent Discussions
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Thank you for this advice. I am about to plant some trees. I recently had a huge poplar crash to the ground. I then noticed wire through it - it…(more)
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Call a consulting forester and have him or her walk your woodlot with you. He’ll give you a sense of the trees’ value, local markets, good logging contractors in your…(more)
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I own a property where a tannery once stood. Whenever I dig near that sight I smell a distinctive noxious odor. Could that be from residue of the hemlock tanning…(more)
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Very insightful article, well done ;)
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I have 30 acres of mostly sugar maples, I have what I think are many straight veneer logs, How do I go about getting a fair price for my trees?
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