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If this story were a movie, it might best begin with a flashback. After the opening credits, perhaps backed by an ominous soundtrack, we’d be transported back two years, to a happier…

When visitors arrived at Ed Lanigan’s 309-acre tree farm in Alton, New Hampshire, he waved them over to a row of sugar maples he had tapped a couple of weeks earlier. The March breeze…

Every community has its hubs: those people who tie disparate strands of the network together, who collect and distribute information. For the forest products industry in northern New England,…

For six wintry months, trees have appeared as woodblock reliefs or iron sculptures, their bare limbs framed against a cold horizon. But as spring unfolds, stark branches morph into soft…

For those of you struggling to learn bird identification, here’s an innovative system to help you name any species you encounter. That’s right. No more pesky field guides. Your…

When an insect develops on a single host, and kills the host in the process, it is called a parasitoid. Parasites, on the other hand, tend to nibble on their hosts without killing them. And…

Once upon a time, forest stand structure meant age structure. Areas of forests containing similar-aged trees were called even-aged stands, and areas with trees of multiple ages were considered…

Let’s go back to the good old days. Let’s go back to the days when all was well, when life was pure, when music filled the air. Chances are good that every one of us is drawn to an image…

For some time now, the board and staff of the Center for Northern Woodlands Education have been working on a plan to increase our organization’s capacity so that we can reach many more…

With the discovery that crude oil could be refined into a seemingly endless variety of products, petroleum became one of the most important substances on earth. Now, more than a century later,…

The act of tapping a maple tree is a fairly simple task, yet it’s one that’s often done incorrectly. Improperly tapping a tree can lead to lower sap production and, worse, poor…

Trees are about half water, maybe a little less in winter. And if the temperature drops low enough, the water in even the most cold-hardy tree will freeze. Since ice crystals can shred cell…

In winter, Lynn Malerba’s peak experiences don’t occur on mountaintops. Her idea of a great February weekend is to teach a small group of novice explorers how to thrive on the…

The diversity of behavior among bird species is nowhere so dramatic as in their nest construction. Each species builds a specifically precise nest that differs in functional ways from those of…

These prices are for #1 hardwood logs, at least 8 feet long, with three clear faces and a minimum 12-inch top diameter. In the timber world, this is a log of average quality, not a prime…

On a walk through a still, snowy sugarbush, the peacefulness can be overwhelming; everything looks to be in good order. But all may not be as perfect as it seems. In any sugarbush, there is a…

On a raw December day in northern Vermont, with a nor’easter bearing down on New England, the kitchen in Sarah Taparauskas’s circa 1850s farmhouse is a warm, inviting place to…

No birdwatcher’s life is complete without experiencing the penetrating gaze of a great gray owl. Even a glance from those lemon-yellow eyes will cut through your Carhartts. Designed for…

I have been managing woodlots in central Vermont since 1987, and in that time, two major ice storms have hit my area. Those two storms damaged thousands of acres across the region, and many…

Some stands of Scots pine in Europe (that’s what it’s called in its native range) are gorgeous, with straight, unbranching trunks that self-prune nicely, revealing the lovely…