Climate change will affect far more than tree species in the northern Forest. it will likely have profound effects on the forest-based businesses and recreational activities that provide the…
Articles
The Shrinking Wood of Winter
We’ve all seen it. Every winter, a few weeks after the heat comes on, the doors in our houses start to shrink. If you have traditional 4-panel or 6-panel doors, the panels show white…
At Work in the Maine Woods with Logger Tom Cushman
The office of Tom Cushman’s company, Maine Custom Woodlands, LLC, in New Gloucester, Maine, is surrounded on the Pineland Campus by large companies such as Apple Computer and Energy…
Photo Essay: Harvesting in a Time of Plenty
Most of us, whether or not we have farming or even gardening in our blood, think of fall as harvest time. The September full moon is known as the harvest moon, fall celebrations are…
Woodland Invasives: Doing Battle with Non-Native Plants
A huge mound of vines, 8 feet wide by a dozen yards long, lay baking in the August sun. The effort required to cut all those vines by hand, drag them out of the woods, and pile them up to dry…
Apple Scab, Venturia inaequalis
Although apple scab is everywhere all the time, it is most apparent in the fall, as we try to avoid apples spotted with its telltale, ugly, black lesions. Those spots, it turns out, were…
Draft Animals Can Play a Vital Role in Forestry
I bought my first draft horse in 1986, and I have been working horses, and oxen, in the woods ever since. One of the most common questions I get is, “Can you really make any money…
Determining a Tree’s Lean
Since only a very few trees grow absolutely vertically, determining and adjusting for the lean of a tree is an important skill for any sawyer preparing to fell a tree. For the sake of…
Chokecherry, Prunus virginiana
In the fullness of summer and in the depths of winter, chokecherry is not particularly noticeable. By early June, it has all but disappeared as part of the anonymous expanse of greenness that…
A Damaging Tradition: Diameter-Limit Cutting Diminishes a Woodlot
Let me start with a story. Several years ago, a logger showed me the harvesting he was doing on a piece of his family’s property. This was the third time he had harvested this particular…
The Long View
It’s cheap, it’s plastic, but for half a century, the little 21-drawer storage chest has been serving its purpose. It and everything in it could very well have been tossed long…
The Outdoor Palette
Thomas Deininger is an artist, an environmentalist, and an iconoclast. His large assemblages often fracture traditional artistic premises in an overt and seductive manner. By using decidedly…
Mill Prices
The prices reported here are those that log buyers—mostly sawmills and wholesalers—are paying for logs. Because these are prices paid for delivered wood, landowners need to adjust…
Why Is the Treeline at a Higher Elevation in the Tetons than in the White Mountains?
Trees grow where they can. And they are surpassingly capable, making do in an impressive array of conditions around the globe, including many harsh places. But there are limits to their…
Hunting Camp
When I was a boy of about eight, I used to hunt deer out of a little 12x16 camp that sat up in a bowl on the top of Shatterack Mountain in Rupert, Vermont. My father and Junior Harwood had…
From the Center
What’s in a name? With Northern Woodlands as the flagship program of an organization officially named the Center for Woodlands Education, there has been some confusion over the different…
Does an Acre of Hilly Land Contain More Land Than an Acre of Flat Land?
Every acre contains the same measure of land regardless of whether it is steep, bowl-shaped, or the Great Plains. This is due to long-standing conventions of land surveying and accepted…
The “New” Tree Farm Program
In your travels, you have probably seen the easily recognizable “Tree Farm” sign on white posts along the roadsides of woodlands or on the gable ends of farm buildings or sugarhouses.…
The Long View
Unlike spring, summer, fall, and winter, mud season has no official start and end dates. Still, it is a predictable part of the logger’s year, signaling the temporary close to a season of…
From the Center
There’s been a great deal of talk about the economic stimulus package, and specifically about the checks that began arriving in our mailboxes in May. I like to think of Northern Woodlands as…