Articles

Sometime in June, just after its bright, light green leaves have fully expanded, mountain maple’s delicate, yellow-green flowers begin to bloom. The very un-maple-like, tiny flowers are…

If you want to get a trout fisherman’s attention, whisper the words “hex hatch.” When Hexagenia limbata hatches in early summer, the event draws swarms of fishermen to the ponds that…

Sometimes by midsummer you can identify stands of paper birch from far away: they are the tan patches on otherwise green hillsides. Identifying the cause of the discoloration is more difficult…

Greg Saulnier is paid to be picky. At 44, the Rumney, New Hampshire, native has been looking at logs for 15 years, first as a logger and for the last eight years as a log buyer for Columbia…

In the world of high-end veneer logs, there’s a lot of money to be made – and a lot of things to watch out for. High-end veneer logs are an almost mythological subject. These are…

The young people board the van in the middle of a loud, congested neighborhood. As they ride, they watch the scenery gradually change from factories and apartment buildings to fields and…

You can invest in them. The simplest investment would be time. There are many young hardwood stands dense with saplings the size of your finger or fist that need nothing more than time to…

Imagine this situation: one fine evening, a local forester knocks on your door and asks if you had been thinking of cutting your woodlot anytime soon. As this very possibility has been on your…

Because of the way our nation was born and grew, we tend to think of land as an infinite resource. Most of us have ancestors who left an Old World where only the wealthy owned land. When they…

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…

At a recent foresters’ conference, I was discussing with a friend a report we’d heard on the future of Maine’s forest products industry. He noted that, while the volume of wood harvested…

The woods road’s worst enemy is water. It makes travel difficult, and if it’s not diverted, rainwater can wash away a road surface in a single summer storm. You can avoid problems…

Giant sugar maples line each side of the abandoned town road above our farm – gnarled veterans with ropy bark and knobby knees. When the fog is just right on spring and autumn mornings,…

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…

A landowner once phoned to ask me to visit his property to see all the good work he’d done extending his landscaping efforts from his yard into the surrounding woods. He was pleased with…

Most of us have been at least annoyed, if not infuriated, by porcupines from time to time. Their desperate need for salt in the summer months gets them in big trouble around the house. They…

A forest community is the net result of a wide variety of relationships among and between different organisms interacting in a particular place over time. The key word here is relationships.…

One of the great pleasures of wandering in the undeveloped woodland in our area is finding cellar holes, barn foundations, and all kinds of old fences, and imagining what a particular place…

I was given two CDs for Christmas. The first, by Louis Armstrong, begins with his classic, “What a Wonderful World.” Hearing it makes me know what it means to experience tears of joy. The…

Before the trees leaf out is a great time to walk your property lines, a practice that should be an annual event for all landowners. Locating property boundaries often requires the ability to…